Slimy Underbelly Page 4

  “I had a lab down in the sewers, the full nine yards . . . although as a scientist I really should be using the metric system. My landlord evicted me,” Jody said. “He’s a corrupt slumlord, with no patience and no sense of humor. We didn’t get along at all. He marched in one day with his eviction goons—gator-guys—and kicked me out, just like that! He said professional lab space was at a premium, and that he had a waiting list for the unit. Every mad scientist wants a secret lab down in the sewers, you know. So he took all my stuff and chased me out. No argument, no notice.” Jody flushed. “He said I’m just a child, and the lab space should go to a more deserving mad scientist.”

  Robin looked angry, and I could tell Jody had pushed just the right buttons. “That’s age discrimination. You can’t evict a tenant on the basis of age.”

  “That’s exactly what I said,” Jody replied, “but without sounding so legal about it. He confiscated everything: my lab notebooks, my experiments, my supervillain devices, my patent applications, my costume. It was my life’s work.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Life’s work? How long did it take you?”

  “At least six months. I started it even before I came to the Quarter.”

  “So he stole your work. Doesn’t that make him a villain, too?”

  “Villains have style, Mr. Chambeaux. He’s just a bully.”

  Under other circumstances I might have found the whole situation amusing, but Jody looked so earnest with his puppy-dog eyes. He seemed to have been incarnated from a Norman Rockwell painting, and he exuded a nostalgic innocence that everyone missed but few people ever experienced. Again, I had to resist a strong urge to tousle his hair.

  Robin wore a stormy expression, and the magic pencil furiously wrote down notes. She paced back and forth. “If what you say is true, he had no basis for evicting his tenant and absolutely no cause to seize your private possessions. Can you place a value on them?”

  Jody nodded. “Yes, I can—they’re priceless.”

  “We’ll need an itemized list,” I suggested.

  “No, I truly mean they’re priceless. That’s all of my research. The sky is the limit, or as we used to say down in the sewers, the manhole’s the limit. Gosh, don’t treat me like a silly kid just like my landlord did.” He sounded stung.

  “We don’t think you’re silly,” Sheyenne said. “But, remember, you’re the one who came dressed up as a fake hunchback lab assistant.”

  Jody snickered. “Yeah, iGor—that was a good one. Wait until you see my other disguises.” Then he became angry again. “I can prove I’m a serious researcher. I have five patents under review at the Mad Scientists Patent Office. You can check that out for yourself. They take me seriously. I’m a prodigy.”

  “And modest, too,” I said.

  “Hey, you don’t get ahead in the mad scientist world by being shy and polite. Did Dr. Frankenstein say, ‘I’d consider it a great favor if you would please throw the switch’? No, he was forceful and commanding: ‘Throw the switch!’ ”

  “All right, you convinced me,” I said. “We’ll look into your landlord and see what we can do about retrieving your possessions.”

  Robin didn’t want to stop there. “And I can file a suit against him for wrongful eviction.” The pencil tapped itself against her legal pad as she pondered. “On the other hand, I’m not sure how a lease signed by a minor would be valid. He must have found some kind of loophole.”

  Sheyenne took out a new client contract. “We’re running a business here, however. We need to come to terms about your method of payment for our services.”

  Jody blinked his blue eyes at her. “Golly, I thought we agreed it was a pro bono case?”

  “You suggested that it be pro bono. . . .” Sheyenne said.

  He kept looking at her and grinning hopefully.

  Robin’s heart had already melted as her indignation rose, and I said, “It might be a good idea to show some generosity. You never know when it’ll come in handy to have a junior mad scientist and possible future supervillain on your side.”

  Sheyenne, unable to maintain her stern expression, tore up the client agreement. “All right, pro bono it is.”

  I glanced down at the remnants of Jody’s disguise on the floor. “Don’t forget your hump on the way out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The cases don’t solve themselves, and I had an ogre’s voice to recover. And bullets to get out of my back. Fortunately, with the Wannovich sisters it would be one-stop shopping.

  I made a call to Mavis hoping that she had some knowledge of voice-abduction sorcery, particularly the kind that used amphibians as catalysts. Since I was also due for my monthly maintenance touch-up spell, I could kill two vultures with one stone. Mavis and Alma Wannovich asked me to meet them at the publishing offices.

  I stood outside the tall glass-and-metal headquarters of Howard Phillips Publishing (with their slogan “We Love Our Craft” engraved in stone tablets on the front of the building). The sisters were adorable and unusual in their way, and they had certainly come a long way since their original dispute with the publisher, when a typo in one of their spell books had turned Alma into a sow, permanently. At Chambeaux & Deyer, we had brought the matter to a satisfactory resolution.

  Robin had strong-armed the publishers, Howard Phillips and Philip Phillips, into recalling all copies of the spell book, printing an erratum sheet—and hiring the sisters to work in editing and production. The Wannoviches rapidly moved up in the ranks; Mavis was now senior production editor and Alma, despite being a sow, was senior acquisitions editor. Their meteoric rise was due in no small part to the success of the “Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.” adventures they had released.

  Under my arm, in a reusable (and now ventilated) plastic container that had held Robin’s lunch the day before, I carried the frog that had come out of Stentor’s throat. Not knowing what to do with a pet frog, Robin had added some lettuce and a few berries, but the frog didn’t seem hungry, or at least not interested in what she had put on the lunch table.

  When I was a young boy I’d caught frogs and kept them in cardboard cigar boxes my dad gave me. I had never known how to feed them, and those pet frogs didn’t last long. That was why I needed to solve this case as quickly as possible. I wasn’t about to catch gourmet flies to feed this one.

  Inside the clean, cold lobby of the publishing house, a young human receptionist waited behind a high desk that was like a fortress wall. Posters showed new releases, including two more Dan Shamble adventures, memoirs of various undead celebrities, and the obscure scholarly texts that had been the original fodder for Howard Phillips Publishing.

  The company had announced a forthcoming special edition, a perfect facsimile of the Necronomicon to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of the Big Uneasy. I didn’t understand what was so special about a twelfth anniversary, but they seemed very excited about the book, announcing a silver edition bound in calfskin, a gold edition bound in goatskin, and a platinum numbered, limited edition bound in human skin. The caption said, “Makes a perfect Valentine’s Day or Walpurgis Night gift.” I wasn’t sure the marketing approach would be effective, but it wasn’t my business.

  I signed the visitor’s log at the receptionist’s desk. “I’m Dan Chambeaux, here to see Mavis and Alma Wannovich.”

  The receptionist looked at my sport jacket with its stitched-up bullet holes, my fedora, the bullet hole in my forehead, my grayish skin. She raised her eyebrows. “Sure you are. That’s what he said.” She nodded toward a man sitting on the black-upholstered sofa in the waiting area. He was apparently a zombie, or at least a human who had applied generous makeup to his face; he also wore a fedora and a crudely stitched sport jacket.

  “He doesn’t look a thing like me,” I said. “Do you get imposters often?”

  She continued to regard me with skeptical eyes. “I’ve gotten two today.”

  I opened my billfold and showed her my PI license, as well as my driver’s license, which displayed my bir
th date, death date, and recertification of ability to drive. “Believe me, I’m the real one. Mavis will vouch for me, and Alma will give her snort of approval. I do have an appointment.”

  The receptionist made a phone call, talked briefly with Mavis’s office, then hung up. Without apologizing, she gave me a guest badge. “Affix this to your jacket and pass through the metal detector, then go on up.”

  Publishing houses had been forced to add security measures because so many aspiring authors did not take rejection well. And when most of the would-be writers submitting manuscripts in the Quarter were monsters, editors couldn’t take any chances.

  When I sauntered through the metal detector, alarms immediately sounded. Pale and terrified, an armed rent-a-cop guard dashed in with his pistol drawn. It was hard to find good human security guards these days, and most applicants had watched enough movies to know that security guards and monsters didn’t mix well. This rabbity guy looked ready to shoot first and ask questions (or at least fill out the forms) later.

  I put up my hands and stood perfectly still—I’d already been shot several times today. Then I realized what had set off the metal detector. “It’s just a bunch of bullets in my back.” I had left my handgun back at the office, knowing it wasn’t wise to carry a loaded .38—or a loaded gun of any caliber—into a publishing headquarters.

  The guard kept his gun trained on me, his hands shaking. He seemed to think the frog in the plastic container might be some kind of concealed explosive.

  I said, “Let me turn around slowly. I’ll show you the bullet holes in my back.”

  I did, and the guard easily spotted the numerous tiny perforations. He frowned. “Did you get trapped in a BB gun shooting range or something?”

  “Those are from Timmy guns,” I said. “Lawn gnomes.”

  “Ahh.” The guard kept his gun ready. “I can’t let you through without special dispensation.”

  And that involved another phone call to Mavis, who finally came down in person to escort me through security and up to her office.

  Mavis Wannovich was a big-hipped witch who wore a voluminous black muumuu emblazoned with stars. She also sported a traditional pointy hat perched on top of her nest of unruly black hair. Her hips weren’t the only part of her that were larger than average, just the first thing one tended to notice.

  “Mr. Chambeaux, I’m so sorry for the trouble.” She scolded the guard. “This man is my dear friend, and it sounds like he’s had a rough day. Did you say there are bullets in your back?”

  “Small ones,” I said, “but quite a few of them.”

  “We have a spell to take care of that.” She took me by the arm and led me to the elevator, finally noticing the plastic container under my arm. “Oh, you brought me a frog. How sweet!”

  “It’s for a case I’m working on,” I said, “something I hope you can help me with.”

  The elevator doors closed, and she punched the button for thirteen. Mavis’s eyes lit up. “A case, how wonderful! Is it something we can include in a future novel?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know how the case will turn out yet.” Even when I didn’t find my investigations particularly interesting, Mavis claimed that the stories were marketable. So far, her instincts had proved correct.

  Sheyenne insisted that the “Dan Shamble” series had generated business for Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. “Advertising is expensive,” she always said. “Publicity is cheap.”

  The elevator doors opened on the thirteenth floor, and Mavis led the way. “Just give us the bare bones of the story, and we’ll make sure it’s plotted well. My sister and I will include ourselves as glamorous characters, if we provide the key pieces of information.”

  She guided me to Alma’s office, a large corner unit where the desk had been removed to accommodate an inflatable plastic kiddie pool filled with mud. Alma liked to sink her large body into the mud as she rooted through manuscripts. The big sow was nosing through stacks of paper, using her snout to riffle pages. With a snort, she knocked over an eight-inch-thick manuscript, giving her opinion on the book.

  Seeing me, Alma rose from the mud with a squeal of delight. Mavis draped a bath towel over her sister’s back, and Alma stepped out of the bath, daintily placing her trotters in a rinse tub.

  “Mr. Chambeaux is here for his monthly maintenance. He’s had a little wear and tear today.” Mavis’s eyes sparkled. “He also needs our help with a case. He brought a frog!” Alma added more sounds of delight.

  I bent over to set the frog container down on a credenza, and Mavis studied my back, poking her fingers into bullet holes in the jacket. “These holes will require stitches. We can find a magical refabrication spell and run it in tandem with your maintenance.”

  “Only if it’s not too much trouble,” I said. “I do like the jacket.”

  “Of course you do. It’s part of your image.”

  Alma gave an affirmative snort.

  “Let’s take care of your patch-up first,” Mavis said. “Please take off your jacket.”

  I hung it on the doorknob.

  “And your shirt, too, please.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Absolutely. You want to get rid of all the pellets, don’t you? Otherwise you’ll keep setting off metal detectors whenever you come to visit us.”

  I dutifully unbuttoned my shirt. I’m not a particularly glamorous specimen, and you’ll never find me bare chested in Zombie Vogue. I function well enough, and all the patches have taken hold, but there’s only so much you can do with multiple bullet holes. Fortunately, the small-caliber Timmy gun bullets could be smoothed over.

  Mavis went to Alma’s bookshelves and studied the spines. I didn’t know how the sow managed to pull down volumes from high shelves, but the two witches worked closely together. Mavis opened a particular tome to a particular page. Her brow furrowed. She looked in the index, tried several other pages, and grinned. “Ah, a fabric repair spell! Yes, we can do them both at the same time.”

  She lit candles and set the book down on a low shelf, where Alma could see it as well. Then Mavis began chanting my usual monthly rejuvenation spell. The witches did it as a favor to me, in exchange for me granting them access to my case records, so long as the names were changed before any adventures saw print.

  Mavis was chatty as her spell work continued. “By the way, I wanted to tell you the wonderful news. We just learned that our first Dan Shamble volume, Death Warmed Over, was nominated for the Shamus Award!” She grinned, no doubt waiting for me to express my awe and excitement.

  “What’s the Shamus Award?” I asked.

  “Given by the Private Eye Writers of America. It’s very prestigious, but I doubt we’ll win because it’s a very nontraditional novel.”

  “I’m a nontraditional detective,” I said.

  “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” Mavis pointed out. “And we can put it on the cover of the book. We’ve contracted with Penny Dreadful to continue the series, and she’s doing a few online short stories, too.”

  Alma grunted a reminder, and Mavis snapped her fingers. “Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you! We’re expanding our Undead Detectives line. We’ll be introducing a whole new set of characters : vampire detectives, werewolf detectives, even a skeleton detective.”

  “And people will want to read those?”

  “Most definitely. Those were the characters that tested highest on our marketing surveys. We also proposed a ghoul crime fighter, but apparently there’s not much interest in heroic ghouls.”

  “I can understand why,” I said.

  When the two finished their spell, I felt a sudden staccato relief as numerous BB-sized projectiles popped out of my back and pattered on the floor like little ball bearings. “Thanks. I’m glad to have those gone.”

  Mavis removed my sport jacket from the doorknob and handed it to me with a flourish. “See, all the little marks in the fabric are gone. We left the original bullet holes in front, though. It’s part of yo
ur debonair flair.”

  “It does remind me of getting gunned down,” I said.

  Now, to the case. I picked up the frog in its container and opened the lid to show the spotted creature looking up at us. I explained how Stentor’s voice had been stolen, and that the frog had something to do with it.

  “Like a catalyst. Hmm, I’ve heard of this,” Mavis said.

  That surprised me. “Really? Someone using a frog to steal the voice from an opera-singing ogre?”

  “Not precisely that, but in general terms.” Mavis pulled down other books from Alma’s shelf and flipped through them. “This will be so much easier once we get all of our backlist digitized.”

  Alma rooted around the manuscripts on the floor, let out a satisfied squeal, and nudged a pile of paper toward us. It was a previously published and badly formatted book called Esoteric Uses for Frogs and Toads. I picked it up. “This could be what we’re looking for.”

  Mavis also discovered an obscure reference in one of her other volumes, and when we compared it to the self-published book, we discovered that the enthusiastic amateur author had plagiarized entire sections. Regardless, the summary was the same.

  “It appears that someone used the frog as a vehicle to steal Stentor’s voice. It’s something called the ‘amphibious transference protocol.’ ”

  “Does that mean you can find where his voice went? That voice is Stentor’s livelihood.”

  Mavis nodded slowly. “We can confirm that the voice wasn’t just lost. It was stolen, as you suspected.”

  “Is it gone, then?” I asked.

  “No, someone else is using it, and this cute little frog is the key. Would you mind leaving the frog here for further study? We can try to run a tracer spell, divine the future from the patterns in its spots, and see if we might find any sort of magical linkage with the fiend who stole Stentor’s voice. Alma and I will take care of it, I promise.”

  The sow snuffled and lifted her head to inspect the frog in its plastic container. Mavis agreed with her sister. “Yes, it’s intriguing—and absolutely adorable.”