The "Expletive-Deleted" Case - Entry 2

The Hammertown suburbs were thick with the under-kept, expansive forest of the apathetic elderly, and Tabitha Shinkleblossom’s abode couldn’t have been more remote if it had been buried 50-feet underground; on arrival, I retroactively gave credence to Randy’s suggestion of hiring a helicopter to lower me onto the premises, as the driveway brush was dense enough for me to employ my Lawson Detective Agency © Brand Machete, driving slowly and chopping my way through. The density of the low-hanging tree-branches and slithering vines precluded my usual panache for first impressions, as I inadvertently knocked on Ms. Shinkleblossom’s door with the front bumper of my car.

I backed up and got out just in time to see her open the door with a flourish, glaring into me with the eyes of a rabid pheasant from behind seemingly spray-painted eyelids. I smiled as best I could, attempting to ignore the harlot’s dress on her 80-some-odd-year-old-frame, and looked again at her menacing visage, all mauves and cinnamon covering the wrinkled anger of the victimized. I began to explain my intrusion when she cut me off, yelling in a raspy, throat-shredding tone that I should have used the doorbell, as that’s what it was there for. I smiled again, looking for some common ground between me and this frightening caricature of a whored-out Betty White, and described the difficulties I would have had in reaching the doorbell with the front-end of my car. She raised a bony, decaying finger to admonish me some more when I interrupted and told her that I was from the Lawson Detective Agency. Shinkleblossom stopped and smiled wryly, inviting me in for "jellied toast" while giving me the jitters I haven’t felt since family-reunion-day at the Hammertown burn ward.

It obviously wasn’t her imposing physicality that gave me pause, as she couldn’t have weighed more than a box of Lawson Detective Agency Super-Computer paper...no, it was the terrifying glint in her eye, her capacity for evil that struck fear into my caffeine-and-nicotine-hardened heart that left me fearfully dawdling into her house like an abused pet. Though the grape-jellied toast was indeed delightful, I knew enough to keep my wits about me, as well as Ms. Shinkleblossom in front of me; this was to be nerve-testing interview, and I was unexpectedly drowning in my skittishness.

Entry 3