The "Expletive-Deleted" Case - Entry 3

I managed to extract the crumbs of the jellied-toast from my beard without a whole lot of fanfare and was settling in nicely, calming myself periodically with the concrete knowledge that Ms. Shinkleblossom, regardless of her hovering menace, was just a frail old lady, albeit one whose skin hadn’t seen natural light since sometime before I was born.

I had just opened my Lawson Detective Agency © Brand Report Binder, putting on my very best "listening" face, when this horrifying talking-corpse of a woman let loose with the vilest, most repugnant string of profanity I had ever heard, punctuating each sentence with the hacking up of left-over phlegm from a hopefully bygone era; I saw colours in her mucous that weren’t invented until the sixties, and the violence with which she coughed left me shaken, my ebbing confidence shattered. I interjected with a light, joking suggestion that if she were to keep up this unapologetic cursing, I would be forced to wash her mouth out with soap. Shinkleblossom’s eyes shot open, like a shark smelling blood, and she stood up as best she could, hunched over like a stone-gargoyle ready to pounce, when it occurred to me that her stunning invective had the familiar ring of the ransom note that she had sent to the LDA HQ. Before she could take what was certain to be an awkward, though hate-fueled, step towards me, I asked her about the similarity of her speech to the aforementioned ransom note. Stopping abruptly and smiling sweetly, Hyde turned back to Jekyll and offered me some "sweets". I deftly asked if she had any caramel; she responded with a "yes" and a rejoinder that she would have to fetch them from the kitchen. I nodded and excused myself for a bathroom break.

I left the bathroom door open just a crack to see when she was fully enveloped in the cloak of the kitchen before I jumped back out to find some evidence of her handwriting; I found a stash of some private correspondence and squirreled it away in my Report Binder, sitting quickly before the beast returned with her caramels. Shinkleblossom entered again, brandishing a candy-dish full of cellophane-wrapped candies, and I stood, explaining that I had to be on my way, though it had been a pleasure. There was a full second of awkward silence, followed by a flung candy-dish, cutting through the stagnant air like a ceramic Frisbee, and the unthinkable lunging of an 80-year-old, fifteen-feet across the living room, grasping at my abdomen. I was able to elude the dish-projectile, side-stepping the suddenly gymnast-like geriatric as I went for the door, kicking behind me like I was attempting to dissuade a maniac pit bull. I got out to my car and started it just as the pick-ax came crashing down on my hood; I peeled out backwards, the pick-ax still embedded, and screeched forward to freedom with the haunting image in my rearview mirror of a frothy-mouthed senior running after the car, pulling up and catching her breath, finally giving up the chase before I was swallowed up in the driveway-brush.

I was sweaty, my heart pounding, and I had some extensive aesthetic damage to the hood of my conveyance, but I was heading back to the safety, and comfort, of the Lawson Detective Agency. I wasn’t clear on much, but one thing was certain: I was in desperate need of some coffee...and Randy was doing the next interview.

Entry 4