Act I
Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast,
O, what a panic is in your little breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With argumentative chatter!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering plough-staff.
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
And fellow mortal!
~ “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns
Chapter One: The Trudeaus
I
Those deserving of death were hung on the bathroom wall.
That first morning, I sat looking at the Wall of Death while I relieved myself. When my
wife and I first started our P.I. firm, I placed the names of the dead on the wall in the restroom,
where twenty-two small plaques—like those you’d find on an Employee of the Month Wall—
chronicled those whose lives Mo and I had taken on our journey to normalcy. I changed the
names, of course, separating first and last and rearranging them in random order so as not to have
any evidence that our victims were who they’d once been. There was no chance someone would
come looking for these people, but one could never be too careful.
Aside from the plaques, the walls of the bathroom were bare. My wife had decorated the
rest of the office. Mo had bisected the forty-by-forty space with two aluminum desks she’d found
on clearance at Office Depot for under a hundred bucks apiece. Behind the desks sat Mo’s pink
Hello Kitty office chair and my beige La-Z-Boy Memory Foam number with the squeaky
casters. Anyone walking into our little office on any given day would see our certificates to
operate a business in the great state of California hanging on the left wall—Mo’s side—while on
the right—my side—they would find a picture of an obese St. Bernard. Day after day, we sat
surrounded by eggshell walls, with threadbare charcoal-gray carpeting, the kind you’d find in
any office setting, under our feet, waiting for someone to come in and offer us a job.
My business done, I got up from the commode and flushed. The man in the mirror
grinned back at me, happy for some unknown reason, while I washed my hands. Behind those
soft hazel eyes hid the mind of an experienced thirty-year-old man. The prematurely gray
sideburns stood out against the rest of my dark-brown mop like silver Popsicle sticks attached to
a ball of fudge. My need for a Just for Men hair kit could have been attributed to a various
number of reasons, but at that moment, I blamed our financial situation.
We were four years into our private investigation venture, looking to make a life on the
right side of things, but goings were slow. A few well-paying jobs here and there kept the lights
on and the printer stocked with ink. Many days, I wondered how long we could stay afloat
without something big coming our way.
Coming out of the restroom, I noticed that Mo and I were no longer alone in the office.
Tommy Kirsch stood on the other side of Mo’s desk, smiling as if he’d just won the coveted first
place trophy in a Kool-Aid Man impersonation contest. For all intents and purposes, Tommy was
our handler. The few jobs we did get usually came through him. I had never asked him his age
because that didn’t matter in my book, but the guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, yet
he had a way of procuring items and information. Since we had quit our previous profession, we
needed someone like Tommy to fill in the gaps created by going legal. Tommy wasn’t thin, nor
was he fat, but resided somewhere in the middle with the rest of the American populace. That
day, he wore a blue T-shirt tucked into a pair of dress slacks that seemed to fight for attention.
His apparel almost screamed, “Look how odd we are together!”
Tommy nodded at me and asked, “E’erythin’ come out all right, Larry?” He was a
transplant to California. If you asked him, Tommy would say he still considered Alabama home.
I gave him a thumbs-up. “Peachy keen, jelly bean.”
Mo swiveled in her chair to look at me. Her short-cropped, black hair shone in the light
coming through the glass front of the building, giving it an azure tone. “Tommy’s found us a job.
He told me as much while you were… indisposed.”
Tommy snickered. “Indisposed? That’s uppity-speak for takin’ a shit, I reckon?”
Ignoring Tommy's vulgarity, I said, “Something like that. What’s this job?”
Tommy filled me in. “Jacob and Bernice Trudeau—banker types—lost their girl
somewheres in Mexico. They need someone to give ’em a hand. That’s all I know right now. I
owe the guy a solid, so I figured I’d let you two make some money off’n my imposed servitude.
They’ll fill you in more when you get there.”
I asked Tommy, “Where do they live?”
Mo answered excitedly, “The Hills.”
Beverly Hills meant money. I already liked the sound of Tommy’s new job. “Are they
expecting us today?”
Tommy grinned. “Nope. Expected y’all last week. I parked my time machine in the spot
next to that beat-up rust collector you call a car.”
I flipped him off.
Tommy gave us the information on how to find the Trudeaus’ house, then left without so
much as a goodbye.