The "Jo Mhama" Case - Entry 2

Through a soothing, eccentric drawl, the story slowly began, like a boll weevil through fifteen miles of cotton; Joquain Andreas Mhama, the man with the rolled-up newspaper and dapper hat, was a captivating, though thorough, speaker. Never before had I heard such pauses between words; it was as if he spoke.

In.

Sentence.

Fragments.

Born during some dateless time in Euchesberg, a small soapstone-producing island near Fracshall Bay, Mhama’s demeanor reflected a life lived with ease. His slow-moving tale and impossibly-deliberate gesticulations were far too much for the irritable Randy to bear; he began flicking at his ear like a muddy elephant blanketed with flies, and I had to keep abortively whistling Cannonball by The Breeders to keep him quietly humming in his chair. Throughout Randy and my low-toned back-and-forth, meanwhile, Mhama was dawdling through his backstory, manufacturing a connection with his audience that was as tenuous as it was engrossing, and as my eyelids batted reflexively, heavy from the weight of terrific boredom, a fedora softly landed in my lap; Randy was fully asleep at this point, so my askance gaze fell upon Mhama himself. That, he said in his unique cadence, referring to the immaculate headwear now in my possession, was not his hat; rather, it was his twin cousin’s, switched around during a time of nonchalance on Mhama’s part. I was unclear as to the importance of this "switcheroo", as well as the likelihood of a "twin cousin", but Mhama teared up quickly, leaving me to fetch some Infanni Afghani coffee, as that was the "tearful reunion" blend, as close to the "stop crying, old man I‘ve never met before" blend as I had at my disposal.

I returned with two steaming cups to find Mhama curled up on my desk, sleeping like a tranquilized Randy on a four-month sabbatical, cradling his fedora like an alcoholic vagrant with a half-empty mickey of vodka. He was murmuring in his sleep, and the disjointed words said as much about what I was getting myself into as the previous two-and-a-half hours I had spent listening to his story had. I had a very specific feeling that neither "sense" nor "logic" were to be much of a factor in this particular case, and the lack of this important combination was, it seems, the Lawson Detective Agency's peculiar curse.

Entry 3