Aachoo Voo, Private Eye: 04/20/21

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 14

Stranger and Stranger Every Day

Lance had disappeared again to who knows where. I hoped he'd be back before Christmas. I planned to treat him to dinner at my parent's palatial home. He had heard so many stories about what went on there during holidays there that he'd begged me to wrangle him an invitation. I had casually dropped the hint that I might be bringing a guest who frequented Hollywood and the Russian Embassy as well as the back stages of Broadway and occasionally the Pentagon (all true) and my mother was instantly impressed (and suspicious) and raised her eyebrows, saying "How wonderful! I'm so glad to see that you're running with a better class of people!" And she gave my father a warning glance, "And do try to talk your mother into leaving that dreadful chicken Gertrude at home, dear!" To which my dad and I both answered simultaneously "Beulah! Her name is Beulah!" The Lady of The Manor sighed and hurried out of the room waving an initialed white handkerchief and moaning in horror while we stifled guffaws behind our disloyal hands.

We knew there was no chance of that happening. In fact, it was the highlight of every Christmas holiday. The only people who did not look forward to it were my mother and her butler. And the maids who were not paid extra to follow Beulah around with pails and scrub brushes. My entire family and I (excluding my brother, of course) opened presents and ate an elaborate dinner later that day that usually always included ham, beef and platters of roast chicken that my mother made certain were placed directly in front of MiMi Voo with a devilish smirk on her face. (My mother's face.) (And also my grandmother's face.)

Through five full courses we then endured the tension and poorly disguised animosity masquerading as politeness that filled the elegant dining room like electricity running down Benjamin Franklin's kite. Poppi, bless his heart just sat there in silence knowing better than to interfere with this new holiday tradition. Occasionally he and my father would look at one another and shake their heads discreetly. I would wink and gently kick them under the table. MiMi defiantly refused to eat the chicken even though she loved chicken cooked in any and every way it could be cooked and upon being questioned as to why she would not accept a portion, she always bowed her head and said that she was only showing respect for the dead. Which consequentially spoiled all of our appetites for the chicken and it ended up going home with some poor unfortunate like a doorman or elevator operator or the newly widowed mayor. Oh, Lance was going to have a lovely time with the Voo family, to be sure! I could hardly wait.

As to what had transpired at Lance's place after the all night Halloween party and the "awakening of the faux-mermaid," it had all the makings of a tragic/comic slapstick movie starring Cary Grant and any of a half dozen of my favorite actresses like Jean Arthur, Katherine Hepburn or Carole Lombard.

We had stopped in at my apartment for some of my famous coffee and to check in on the animals who had been restless and excitable with the festivities of the day and who down to the last critter, had tried to prevent me from leaving for the party upstairs. All except the parrot naturally, who had flown around the premises laughing maniacally and dive bombing all his room-mates into fits of terror before locking himself in his cage (I don't know how he got that key made) and cussing me out in parrot-ese because I wouldn't take him with me.

I had taken photos of him earlier in his little pirate costume and made a fuss over him and given him treats but that apparently wasn't enough. And apparently, he was laboring under the false impression that he was a human being with feathers. And apparently had become his new favorite word because it sounded a bit like parrot, I suppose. He had been driving me mad with it as of late, throwing it into every comprehensible and incomprehensible conversation that he had with me, MiMi and especially himself. I had made a note to call his psychiatrist soon and stuck it on the refrigerator. Also, I wanted to find out where he hid his key to that inside lock and determined to get a copy made of it on the sly. I knew MiMi had made him the costume but I wasn't sure about the key. That bird was too clever for his own good. And too evil. But it had been a memorable Halloween all around.

As Lance and I waited to get off of the barely working elevator all decorated up in ghosts and goblins with hardly enough light shining to see which buttons to push, the ancient thing creaked to a rusty stop and just sat there trembling for a good two minutes without any signs of the door opening. Lance sighed and took the unexpected opportunity to grab me and smack me around with his lips and when the door finally flew open with an unearthly groan, there stood a nun, or what appeared to be a nun, who took one look at us and huffed piously, "Well! I never!" To which Lance responded sweetly, "I would imagine not." She got on, huffing loudly, we got off and almost immediately I tripped over what I assumed were strewn Halloween decorations.

Then we noticed that the entire left hallway was cluttered with torn bits of fish net from the elevator to the door of the blonde mermaid's apartment. Literally ripped to shreds. Angrily, jealously, ripped to shreds like we imagined could have been either of us or both of us or anyone that had stood in the pathway of Neptune's enraged step-daughter. Lance's eyes grew round as saucers at the very thought and we ran down the hall to the safety of my apartment and my watch dog and parrot and shut the door with a resounding slam. I didn't see her for a couple of weeks and then she was on the arm of a sad little man who looked like he was going to burst into tears at any minute and she pretended not to see me but I couldn't resist hissing at her back and meowing loudly. She completely ignored me but her companion took off running, forgoing the waiting elevator and taking the stairs down to the lobby four at a time. She hated me. And the feeling was growing more and more mutual all the time!

For several weeks I had had the suspicion that I was being followed. Not by the usual people that followed me but by something or someone that was far slyer than detectives, ex-lovers wanting revenge and the Clapsaddle gang of widowed and divorced old reprobates trying to prove their masculinity by pinching young rumps just to get free buttered toast. I felt sorry for them but this year they were all getting coal in their stockings. MiMi had been saving her old tattered stockings for me now for months just for this occasion and the biggest, rattiest one was going to Mr. Harold Clapsaddle! Him and his geezer graphs! I rubbed my naughty hands in anticipation of their little crestfallen faces.

I first noticed a shadow over my head as I walked out of Nick's Pub one very late night after 'snooping' for a client that had no concept of "snooping" himself and got caught a total of twenty-two times (he said ) by the people he was attempting to snoop on. I wasn't quite sure what it was that I 'd been hired to find as the old guy kept changing the description and explanations. One day it was "this thing that had a doohickey on it," and the next day it was a box full of "stuff from Persia" that spies had smuggled out before they started calling it Iran. (The country, not the stuff in the box.) Several times he had drawn me elaborate sketches as we sat there drinking Scotch and soda and listening for imaginary noises in the tall bushes around his dilapidated house. I had yet to catch anyone 'snooping' in his bushes for any reason.

It was usually midnight and I was in a bad mood because he had called me out of a warm bed to drive to Queens in the rain trying to follow a map that looked more like a doctor's prescription than a map. Weeks later after I had complained bitterly about the indecipherable thing, he had handed me a real hand drawn map and apologized profusely for giving me an old prescription written by a doctor from the same asylum the parrot had escaped from. I was quite perturbed and charged him an extra fifty for my trouble. I mean, have you ever tried to decipher a medical doctor's hen scratch? No wonder I had ended up in Poughkeepsie! Twice! Once, in the Hudson River. But I did finally figure out what the old man had been looking for. It was called "company." He was just lonely and needed someone to lie to. The Scotch was good though. And the pay was alright. The lies were extraordinary.

There had been bright lights and buzzing noises outside my bedroom window on a few occasions. I had strange dreams that seemed more than dreams. One morning I had awakened to find my window open and my missing shoes setting there just as plain as day. I was puzzled and delighted, especially when I noticed they'd been professionally shined. I couldn't remember all the details of that night in upstate New York. I was still missing time among other things. I had returned home wearing strange ugly shoes two sizes too big and my clothes on in reverse. And I never did find my thermos. The mystery was so over my head that I finally just gave up on solving it and wrote it off as an Open Closed case.

One cold moonlit night, Mr. D'Sal and I had gone shopping for new camera equipment because as per usual, I had broken the last equipment he'd helped me pick out. Not to mention his car. It was still in the shop. It had gotten me back home but when I'd slammed the door upon exiting the car, the thing had simply fallen all too pieces. The mechanics at the shop said it looked like it'd been literally dropped out of a plane. They weren't sure they could put it back together and were hinting that it would probably be less expensive to buy a new car. I was considering giving him the convertible I had bought using part of Mr. Arehte's fortune. I hardly ever drove it. I loved it too much to see it destroyed and I knew it would be safe in Mr. D'Sal's care just as long as he didn't let me borrow it.

After shopping we'd gone to Central Park to hear a jazz combo and bought food and drinks for a picnic under the stars. It was a lovely evening, calm and companionable. We enjoyed the music, food and stars and strolled through the park watching winos and weirdos watching the wealthy and worldly on the way to catch a taxi cab. The only bad thing that happened was when we'd stopped and bought coffees from a vendor and I was holding both cups as Mr. D'Sal paid for them. There was a bright flash of light which momentarily startled and confused me and in the confusion, I inadvertently smashed both cups into my friend's chest and showered him with steaming hot coffee.

He stood there partially screaming silently in pain and partially at the top of his lungs and yet at the same time looking like a man in the throes of either unbelievable horror or ecstasy. (I suppose a quiet, calm evening under the stars had been too much to ask) Neither of us remembered the cab ride home or could figure out why it was nigh on three in the morning when we made it to our respective residences. Nor did we know what had happened to the coffee vendor. He'd just seemed to vanish in the flash of light while still counting Mr. D'Sal's coins. The coffee maker continued to dispense, however but the molecular structure of the coffee had been decidedly changed. (And became too hot for a volcano to swallow.)

Later, snuggled up in bed with Weiner, Toulouse and the ferret, I said goodnight to Manny the mouse and ignored the parrot's screeching complaints about not being allowed in my room and fell asleep. Or something akin to sleep. I wasn't quite sure. But the dream or the thing akin to a dream that came to me filled my head like a silver screen movie. I seemed not so much to watch it as to experience it. A bizarre scene, stranger than fiction and yet familiar.

It, whatever it was, was brilliantly lit. Random metallic chairs, tables and instruments lay broken and strewn about a sci-fi movie looking control room. Strange almost invisible globes of liquid rolled around on the spotless metallic floor. Wires dangled from the ceiling above long tables like one might find in a medical examination room. Silky pieces of parchment-like paper floated through the dense air. along with a Hershey bar and a thermos bottle. My thermos bottle! (I recognized the dent.) I heard groans or something akin to groans. Otherworldly moans that sounded familiar like the moans of men I'd heard dozens of times as they'd run for their lives, fallen off cliffs or got rolled up in folding staircases. Those kinds of moans.

The last thing I remember seeing in that odd mental movie was myself being thrown out of a silvery round vessel hovering above Mr. D'Sal's borrowed car which was also hovering above the ground. As I fell silently and enigmatically for what seemed a long time, I was astounded to see several small grayish creatures in various stages of battle wounds and bandages watching me through the long horizontal window from which I had just been thrown. One in particular, a fragile fellow, really kind of cute in an alien outer spacey way, was standing there bandaged from head to toe, holding himself up on some sort of crutch and shaking his strange three fingered hand at me with furious rage. He looked absolutely traumatized. I suspected that a very close encounter with moi, Aachoo Voo, had something to do with his state. I waved back and gave him a sheepish grin just as his buddies pulled him away from the window and floored their craft out of our solar system.

To be continued in EPISODE 15

LINK 👇

https://aachoovoo.blogspot.com/2021/04/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode.html