The "Monkeyshines" Case - Entry 13

Bernice Sheppenwastein had turned herself and her mincing, rotten brother, in to the police while I was dealing with my self-inflicted 4-day blackout. I felt useless, sitting there in my home, wolfing down my smoked-salmon club-sandwich that Randy had kindly brought over from One Duke...and, just as generously, refused to give to me until I paid him for it. Maybe it was payback for my assumption that Randy had conspired to attack me, maybe he was short of cash, maybe he was just being difficult...what kind of person could possibly have insight into a mind as mangled as Randy’s? It wasn’t me, not on an empty stomach, and especially not when my mind was working overtime to wrap itself around the particulars of how this case came to such an abrupt end.

Sean, that ridiculous cartoon of a would-be super-villain, had pulled off his greatest triumph in having Channel 12 attacked by those ferocious monkeys, yes...but the impetus behind his "plan" was to put together a top-shelf demo reel, and by focusing his idiotic scheme on a television station, he all but cut himself out of the exclusive rights to the footage, as roving cameramen had angles inconceivable to the talent-deprived elder Sheppenwastein. But Randy explained that, through his incredibly irritating, tittering laughter, Sean told the police that he had just pulled off the greatest "monkeyshine" ever: A practical joke, epic in scale, that was as true to the colloquial phrase as it was to the literal. Like many a criminal mastermind, or, in this case, moronic, quasi-retarded headcase, Sean had overlooked his original intentions when he clicked on the idea of the "epic" prank. And he wanted the credit, as meager as it may be. Bernice was getting charged as an accomplice, but did, in fact, drag her brother in to the authorities...literally too, apparently using those lumberjack-arms and ping-pong-ball knuckles to scrape that little jackass through the front door of the station like he was gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. I thought back to our first meeting, that hulking Bernice and I, and I had one unanswered question left to ask before I was willing to let this case fade into the background.

Randy called the station and located Bernice for me, though faster than expected; the phone was jammed into my face just after I had similarly jammed a fistful of food into my mouth, making the first 30-seconds or so of the conversation just short of unintelligible. After a good, hardy swallow, helped enormously by a palette-cleansing sip of Hammertown’s Finest Swamp-Water, I finally got my question out to Bernice: Why was she kneeling in front of the door when I arrived at her house? There was a long pause on the other end of the line, followed by the slightest of sniffles. With a quivering voice, she finally told me that she had dropped a contact lens in her hallway right before I had knocked. It didn’t seem to be that heart-wrenching a situation, looking at that commonplace scenario with the cold, jaded eye of a trained Detective, so when I carefully continued by asking about the lens’ purported value, she responded in a shaky tone, telling me that it was a family heirloom, and that she had, effectively, thrown away a generation’s worth of memories by losing it. Bernice then dissolved into hysterical wailing, and I hung up the phone, confused and slightly ill-at ease from the "explanation". Some mysteries are meant to be left unsolved, I thought to myself...more so the ones I wasn’t getting paid for.

I scuttled the remaining memories of the "monkeyshines" case from my head, as well as Randy from my home, and settled in for a solid week of reclusivity and daytime TV. I needed to recharge, and slothfulness had always been my faithful battery. Case closed.