The Medium Snooze - Chapter 2

Chapter Two : The Magnificent Melissa Maybrook.

So Gerald had been my last case and I was feeling pretty down. It was a Wednesday evening and I was just about to call it a night, Alice had left about two hours ago and I’d been trying to be creative with our finances to keep the landlord from breaking four of my legs but it’s hard being creative with squat to play with, my head hurt and I needed a drink. When she walked in. This dame was all legs, she was a millipede, but what legs. As she sat down I gave her assets the quick once over, of course given her best assets were her legs a quick once over actually took quite a while and she looking fairly edgy by the time I’d finished.

“Have you quite finished Mr. Pincher ?”

“Well, I’ve just got a rough sample, I’ll have to check the rest of your merchandise later.”

For some odd reason she seemed strangely unmoved by my legendary charms.

“I’ve a job for you Mr. Pincher.”

“Well toots, I’ll just check my schedule. I’m a busy ‘wig lady.”

“Mr. Pincher...”

“Call me Ernie.”

“Mr. Pincher. No one has hired you in over a month.”

I didn’t like that smile. It sort of said “I know all about you, I’ve got class, you’re scum, let’s negotiate how I can rip you off”.

“Ummmm... look toots, I don’t know where you get your information but you may want to think about getting it changed.”

“My name is Melissa Maybrook and my sources are very reliable.”

Bing! a little bell rang in my head. Melissa Maybrook. I’d heard that name before, but where ?

“Are you or are you not interested ?”

“All depends too... erm, Mel. Can I call you Mel ?”
“You may call me whatever you like, but if you want to get hired you’ll call me Mrs. Maybrook.”

Ooooops.

“The job is straight forward enough Mr. Pincher. I want you to keep my husband alive.”

Hmmmm.... maybe this broad’s info wasn’t so hot after all.

“I’m not sure I’m interested, I don’t really go in for that kind of stuff anymore. I haven’t had the greatest amount of success in that area.”

That smile again.

“No doubt you’re referring to your last case, one for a late Mr. Spindler ? Don’t worry Mr. Pincher I know all about that.”

“You aren’t worried hubby is going to end up missing a few limbs then ?”

That sounded more like the hopeful plea I was trying to avoid than the flippant quip I was aiming for.

“That would be rather difficult Mr. Pincher. My husband is Samuel Maybrook.”

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Oh yes, the little bell in my head suddenly wouldn’t have looked out of place in Notre Dame and Quasimodo was having a field day.

Samuel ‘Sammy’ Maybrook was a small time sleaze made big, very big. He’d started out working as a runner for a small time numbers guy called Lenny the legs. Lenny ran a betting ring, nothing big, just the odds on the local worm races. No one could ever figure out why Lenny had hired Sammy, after all Lenny was a crane fly, he could cover most of the garden in about five minutes but instead he hired Sammy, a snail. Don’t get me wrong I got nothing against snails personally but they ain’t exactly the fastest over the ground you know ? Lenny seemed happy enough though and Sammy used to trundle around the place delivering stuff of none specific origin. When Lenny passed on after an argument with a hornet syndicate over some disagreement everyone assumed his right hand man, another crane fly called Flyin’ Freddie, would carry on the good (or reasonably profitable anyway) work. To everyone’s amazement (well, everyone who gave a damn about a two aphid betting shop) Freddie stepped aside and Sammy boy took over.

Nothing changed much at first, then Sammy started hiring more muscle and began moving into new markets. Now normally if anyone tries to expand in the garden the higher bosses crack down hard, people have been known to find themselves with a price on their head for even thinking about branching out. So Sammy looked like he was heading for a world of trouble. Except it never happened, he managed to carve himself a nice little piece of a number of emerging illegal markets and turned in a fat profit. Eventually he bought himself a bar called Turfside, a real classy slug pit at the top end of the lawn. Turfside attracted a more refined client than the joints around the hedge, crickets, grasshoppers bumble and honey bees, this was a very elegant place. The former owner, a ladybird named Herman, sold the whole lot to Sammy and disappeared into retirement by some sun drenched lake in the meadow. The main attraction of Turfside was it’s singer, Miss Melissa Magnific (stage name presumably) and it appears that she had been unable to resist the charms of our Sammy. Quite what the charms of a snail are for a millipede I ain’t too sure but I’m guessing his social position didn’t hurt any.

Now if rumours were to be believed one of the reasons Sammy was able to accomplish so much was down to his connections to one of the Mafia families either the wasps or the frogs.
The wasps and the frogs have the garden pretty much sewn up between them, of course the ants deny it all (they are, after all, the law), but the garden can more or less be divided into four territories. The part of the garden the ants still do control absolutely is the south east, around the rockery and the compost heap. This is where the rose bushes had been planted, the great and the good had all moved in and an insect is safe to walk amongst the ferns (apart from the odd bird or mouse attack). The ferns and the garden wall running along the east edge are also ant territory as are the flower beds in front of them, it’s where the beds meet the lawn that things start getting shaky. Traditionally east of the path and north of the rockery, all lawn is frog turf, however the ants had started re-establishing the law in the south and frog influence is weak more than 3ft. south of the pond. There was a belief in the garden that the frogs weren’t the force they once were and that the ants would have control of the entire east-side (bar the pond itself) by the end of the year, west of the path is a different story. Life in the west-side is tough, the apple tree in the south corner marked the wasps base but their influence spreads much further than that. Everything south of the bench and west of the path is wasp, no question, even the ants seem to recognise this. The hedge itself changes dramatically as you cross over where the path would be. The word was that most of the garden could be wasp controlled it they could be bothered to make the effort, fortunately for the frogs, the wasps don’t seem to care about the lawn much. That just leaves the area north of the bench and west of the path, a small patch of lawn and hedge. Although they don’t control the territory, the ants police all of the garden whether it’s frog, wasp or neutral, but not here, this is spider country. The spiders are the meanest sons o’ bitches in the whole damn garden, if they ever got together no-one, no wasp, frog or ant would be able to stop them doing whatever the hell they liked, but spiders are loners, they tend to have a few buddies and that’s about it, in-fighting is commonplace. Of course you get spiders everywhere in the garden (like I said they can do virtually whatever they like) but the north west is crawling with them, so it’s a pretty bad place, not somewhere you want to be if you don’t know how to handle yourself. The rhododendron bush, of course, is right on the border of wasp and spider country, like I said the rent’s cheap. Gerald’s place had been a couple of inches into wasp territory and Turfside is a couple of feet east of the path, level with the pond.

The rumours about Sammy having Mafia backing were just that, rumours, and how the hell a slug with a shell like Sammy gets Mafia connections beats me, besides if you’ve got one of the most powerful clans in the garden looking out for you why would you hire a 30 aphid a day P.E. like me ? Of course that was the interesting thing about the meeting, Sammy wasn’t hiring, Melissa was.

“Why do you think someone is trying to kill your husband ?”

“I don’t think Mr. Pincher, I know, and so does my husband. He feels that certain friends of his can handle it but I need someone to watch over him full time.”

“And what does Sammy boy think about this ?”

“Mr. Maybrook, thinks it’s unnecessary but I insisted. I’m not too happy with some of his other... erm... arrangements.”

“Look lady if I’m going to take this job I need to know everything, who your husband’s buddies are, who is trying to kill him, everything, understand ? Anything less is likely to get your husband killed, or even worse me.”

She sighed, it was one of those “Do I really have to go over all of this ?” types. For a minute I wondered if I’d been pushing my luck too far, it’s not like I was the only guy in the garden who could do this kind of thing. Then she smiled again, but this time it was different, this time it seemed to say “Ok, you got me. Here’s the deal.”, it was a smile I felt I could trust, honest, genuine.

I always was bad at reading dames.

“It’s no secret my husband has powerful friends Mr. Pincher and if you take the job it wouldn’t be too long before you found out who they were, so let’s just say he isn’t a water snail.”

So Sammy had backing from the hive. I suppose it sort of made sense, the part of the hedge where Sammy had taken over from Lenny was pretty much wasp territory being next to the apple tree. What made less sense was Sammy buying Turfside which was much nearer the pond than you would expect any wasp backed venture to be. Still it gave me a start. it could be the frogs had decided it was time that Turfside had new management, if that was the case I was going to have to earn my aphids on this one.

“So Sammy is taking heat from the pond ?”

“I’m not sure Mr. Pincher and it doesn’t matter. I told you you’re job is to keep my husband alive not to find out who is behind all of this.”

“Well in my business one usually follows the other. Look I can’t do this job for you if I don’t know who the bad guys are and how am I supposed to protect your husband anyway if he doesn’t want me around ?”

“Sam isn’t crazy on the idea of a bodyguard, but he knows it’s what I want, so as long as you don’t get in his way he’ll play ball.”

A number of uncharitable thoughts zipped through my head, like how slow would I have to be to get in Sammy’s way and how does a snail play ball anyway ?

“Look Mr. Pincher give it a week, if things aren’t working out you can walk away then.”

A lot could happen in a week, especially when frogs and wasps are involved, I could be dead in two hours. Still it was better than being eaten by my secretary.

“Ok, I’ll see how it goes.”

“Thank you Mr. Pincher. Bring whatever you need and be at Turfside at 6am sharp tomorrow. You can stay in one of the under lawn guest rooms, that way you’re on hand whenever Sammy may need you.”
And with that she left, slinking her way off my leaf. I had to admit this job might not be too bad if it meant seeing more of Melissa. I rang Alice at home to let her know what was going on, she was concerned and told me to be careful and to let her know how to contact me at Turfside, kid worries too much.

It was 8.00pm by the time I left the office so I headed down to Wiggies. Wiggies is my local bar, it’s part owned by my Uncle Harry along with a couple of spiders. Unc runs the place on his own, the spiders are apparently silent partners, how Unc came to be in business with two arachnids is something he never talks about and I don’t ask, there are some things you’re better off not knowing, but Unc hadn’t had any trouble around the time of Gerald’s problems, Unc very rarely had any kind of trouble about anything at anytime.

The booze is cheap and nasty, mostly fertiliser and the occasional shot of pesticide for those that can hold it, not the alcohol you get in the slug traps. I’m kinda partial to squirt of Tetramethrin myself, helps build up the immunities, course Alice says it just kills brain cells and that I haven’t got enough too spare, kid needs to get out more. Unc’s place is always good for picking up the odd bit of information, an unlimited bar tab doesn’t hurt either. Unc was behind the bar along with his head barman, a woodlouse named Norman.

“Hey Unc”

“Well if it isn’t my favourite moochin’ freeloadin’ nephew.”

Ok, so with business being slow maybe I’d been abusing the unlimited bar tab a little.

“Oh come on Unc, I can’t owe you that much ?”

“Hmmm... Let’s just say if you weren’t family you might be getting some eight legged visitors, but anyway how’s things ?”

“Lookin’ up Unc, lookin’ up. I got a case starting tomorrow, well not really a case more of a body-guarding gig.”

“Har, Har, body-guarding ? Which poor suckers gonna get torn limb from limb this time ?”

Apparently even members of my immediate family were becoming doubtful of my near legendary detective skills.

“Real funny Unc. I’m moving up in the world. Starting tomorrow I’m looking after one Samuel Maybrook, proprietor of Turfside.”

This look came across Unc’s face like he’d just been invited to a dung beetle all you can eat party.

“Why’s a hot shot like Sammy hiring a down and out gumshoe like you ? No offense”.

“Oh plenty taken Unc, Jeese. Anyway Sammy ain’t hiring, his wife is.”

Unc’s expression looked like the dung beetles had declared it a Jacob’s join.

“What ? Unc ? Come on, what ?”

“Well you know your own business Ernie but I just hear a lot of bad things about Turfside.”

“Such as ?”

“Oh you know, bugs talk. I mean most of it is probably rubbish, but there’s something strange about that place. I mean how does a snail get a joint like that ?”

“Melissa says he has friends, I kinda got the impression he had wasp backing.”

“Melissa ? We on first name terms with the boss already ? You want to watch that Ernie boy, she’s got a bad reputation that one and yeah I’d heard Sammy had wasp backing but Turfside is frog territory. It ain’t right kid, it ain’t right.”

“I know Unc but you know how bad business has been since Gerald. Listen do you think you could ask around ? Try and find out what there is to know about Sammy and Turfside ?”

“Sure kid. After all I gotta keep you alive long enough to pay off this tab if nothing else. What kinda info you after, I mean, if Sammy is a Mafia boy then there’s likely to be a lot of stuff out there and asking for a life history isn’t gonna make me popular.”

“Hey don’t put yourself in trouble Unc. I was just wondering if maybe you could find out a bit about his past, I mean, nobody expected him to take over Lennys.”

“Yeah, that was kinda strange. Hey Norm, you used to know somebody at Lennys didn’t you ?”

Norm looked up from the drink he was studiously pouring, not that it was a difficult order he was fixing it was just that Norm needed to pay close attention to everything he did otherwise he’d accidentally poke his own eye out with his antenna or something. In the academic race of the garden woodlice were not the record holders and in the academic race of the woodlice Norm was getting lapped.

“Yeah boss, my cousin Vinny worked there.”

“You got any idea what happened with Sammy takin’ over from Lenny ?”

“Er... no boss, I think Freddy weren’t that happy about stepping aside but I’d have to talk to Vinny.”

“Yeah you do that. There you go Ernie I’m on the case already. What’s the goin’ rate for a P.E. informer ?”

“As far as I can tell, having two of your legs pulled off in a dark nook.”

“Ummmm... guess I’ll pass then, you being family and all. I’ll see what I can get outta my contacts about the Turfside deal and see if I can drag up any stuff to go with whatever Norm can find out. I wouldn’t hold your breath on the stuff from Norm though, I hired him for his bar-tending skills not his IQ or I’d have been better off with a toadstool.”

With Unc working the background I figured the more he wanted to keep me alive the more info he would find, and the best way to make him want to keep me alive was to have as large a bar tab as possible. I spent the rest of the night making sure Unc would be very interested in my well being. Which makes it all the more surprising that I was on time at Turfside the next morning, insecticide immunities in top form.