The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo
Page 1
The Matter of the
Duct Tape Tuxedo
AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE CRIME SHORT STORIES
Captain Heinz Noonan, the Bearded Holmes: Book One
PO Box 221974 Anchorage, Alaska 99522-1974
books@publicationconsultants.com, www.publicationconsultants.com
ISBN Number: 978-1-59433-862-5
eBook ISBN Number: 978-1-59433-863-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2019942430
Copyright 2019 Steve Levi
—First Edition—
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case not without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America
“Just when I think I’ve heard it all I get another phone call.”
. . . Heinz Noonan
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Matter of The Duct Tape Tuxedo
The Matter of Louie The Lobster
The Matter of The Reappearing Coelacanth
The Matter of The Reverse Dinner Bell
The Matter of The Evanescing Elixir
The Matter of The Purloining In The Peninsula County Land Fill
The Matter of The Penny-Ante Kleptomaniac
The Matter of The Phantasmagoric Highbinder
The Matter of The Cozened Gnomes
The Matter of The Fattening Igloos
THE MATTER OF THE DUCT TAPE TUXEDO
Captain Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville, North Carolina Police Department, was barely conscious of the strange presence in his office until a high-pitched male voice said, “Excuse me.”
Noonan looked up – “up” being the operative word – and saw no one. He saw no one, the detective realized, until he noticed the top of a bald head just at the foot of his field of view. Adjusting his gaze downward, he found himself looking at a perfect man, just downsized, whose head barely protruded above the level of the desk.
“May I help you?” Noonan asked, a bit nervous to be looking at the man half his size, he, Noonan, being seated and the midget fully erect.
“Don’t let my size fool you,” said the little man. “I have a Ph. D. in mathematics and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. No, I don’t pick on mosquitoes, smoking did not stunt my growth and my wife is not a giant, just full size, the American average of five foot eight. And,” his eyes flashed, “we’ve been married for 12 years and have two children, both normal from your point of view.”
“We’re a little testy this morning, aren’t we?” Noonan asked with a wry smile.
“When you’re my size you’ve heard all the jokes,” the little man said. “So I try to get the derogatory statements out of the way quickly. Everyone thinks they’re a comic when it comes to midgets. I am a midget, by the way, not a dwarf. A dwarf is misshapen. A midget . . .”
“That I know,” said Noonan humorously. “A midget is a relative.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s a family joke,” Noonan said as he smiled. “My brother is married to a woman whose family name is Midyette. It’s French.”
“For midget?”
“Maybe. But they are a family of short people. Not midgets. Just short. So it’s a family joke, mixing Midyette with midget.”
“I’ll bet they don’t think it’s funny?”
“Actually, they’re in real estate so anything that helps the client remember their name is fine with them. Can you imagine that? A whole family of realtors in a town on the Outer Banks that is so small it doesn’t have mail delivery?”
“That’s keeping it in the family.”
“Everyone in the hamlet is family.” Noonan smiled. “Now that I know you don’t fight mosquitoes or have trouble with the mathematics puzzlers, may I be so bold as to ask why you’re here?”
“You won’t believe this but . . .”
“Let me tell you something before you start. The strangest cases in America come through that door,” Noonan said as he pointed at his office doorway. “I’ve had everything from kidnapped alligators to corpses making obscene phone calls. I don’t think you can surprise me.”
“OK. In that case, I need help in finding the Komodo dragon trousers from my duct tape tuxedo.”
“I spoke too soon,” Noonan said as he shook his head. “I’m not sure I do believe you.”
“I thought you might find it hard to believe so I brought a photograph.” The midget handed Noonan a photograph that was the size of his, the midget’s, head. It was an 8-by-10 of the midget in a strange outfit that may very well have included Komodo dragon trousers. He was standing next to a woman whose head was out of the photograph. “This is a shot of me and my wife – or at least part of my wife – taken last year.”
“And these, I take it, are the Komodo dragon trousers?” Noonan pointed at the trousers in the photograph.
“Yes. But that is not the duct tape tuxedo.”
“My wife is Alaskan so I know what duct tape is. Can I assume that a duct tape tuxedo is a tuxedo make of duct tape?”
“You can but you’d be wrong. In this case, the tuxedo is made from the duct tape fabric but without the glue. I had the tuxedo specially made for novelty occasions. I have,” he smiled thinly, “quite an ability to raise money for charities. The audience expects something different so I oblige them. A duct tape tuxedo is different and lasts longer than a normal suit.”
“I see. And the Komodo dragon trousers?”
“Actually they are called Komodo trousers because they appear to be made from a Komodo dragon’s skin. Actually they are snake skin of some kind. From Mexico. I wear the Komodo trousers when there is no food involved. I’d hate to stain them.”
“What kind of charities to you attend?”
“Any kind that involve children, disabled people or hospices. I don’t ‘attend’ them; I appear as a celebrity and help them raise money. I don’t charge for my services.”
“I see,” Noonan hesitated. “I hate to ask this, but is your celebrity because of your size of something else?”
“I worked my way through college as a circus midget.” Noonan started to say something but the man cut him off. “Everyone has had a part time job. That was mine. It was kind of a natural. The money was good, I like to travel and I went to school during the cold months. It took me 15 years to get through college and graduate school. When I quit the circus I swore I would never be in a freak show again. Then my oldest child got diabetes and I started helping the American Diabetes Foundation raise money for research. It worked so well that I kept up the appearances.”
“You son is all right now?”
“He’s holding his own, watching his diet. He’ll be OK. Thanks for asking.”
“OK. Tell me about the missing trousers.”
“I came all the way to meet you in person because I didn’t think you’d believe me over the phone. All evidence indicates that the trousers were stolen by a Big Foot.”
“Big Foot? You mean like a Sasquatch? This is North Carolina, not the Pacific Northwest.”
“Yup. And the local police were laughing so hard they didn’t hear the rest of the story.”
“Where, might I ask, do you live?”
“Just outside of Charlotte. In a small town. You wouldn’t know the name.”
“Do you have a lot of Big Foot robberies out there?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“No. This is serious. If you are serious. Any other robberies that have been linked to this Sasquatch?”
“Can it be proven, no. Are there suspicious burglaries that are similar to mine, yes. About six.”
“Tell me about your robbery and then the other ones.”
“OK.” The midget reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card which he handed up and across the desk top to Noonan.
“The Gnarly Gnome?” Noonan said and then looked up from the card.
The midget smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone’s got to have a stage name. Actually, it’s the ‘Gnarly Gnome from Nome.’ The ‘from Nome’ part is not on the card. It was alliterative and anyone will believe anything about Alaska in the Lower 48.”
“I know,” Noonan said. “My wife is Alaskan.”
“Which is why I’m here, frankly. I wanted this case to be taken seriously.”
“So far all I know is that you suspect a Sasquatch of stealing a pair of green Mexican snakeskin pants that are part of a duct tape tuxedo you use when you make appearances as the Gnarly Gnome from Nome. Sounds like a simple case. You just find the Sasquatch and you’ve got the pants.”
“Trousers. Pants are like jeans. Trousers are dressy. You throw your pants on a chair after wearing them all day. You wear your trousers for dress occasions and hang them up neatly when you get home.”
“I stand corrected. And, yes, I do take you seriously. Let’s talk about your robbery.”
“I’m glad someone is finally taking me seriously. Our family lives outside of Sydneyville about sixty miles from Charlotte. We’re in the forest in the sense that we don’t have nearby neighbors. Sydneyville is rural anyway so being out of town means your next-door neighbor is five miles away. There’s not a lot of crime in Sydneyville; less and less the farther we get away from the town center. We’ve had some poaching on our land and someone set a fire by accident but that’s about it.”
“How much land do you own?”
“None. The bank owns all of it. We’re buying it.”
“OK. How many acres are you buying from the bank?”
“Ten acres, more or less. There’s a lot of national and state park land around us so we’re almost in-holders. All of our roads are in so we aren’t having any trouble with regulators.”
“Do you work at home?”
“No. In Sydneyville. I’m a CPA.”
“With a Ph. D. in Mathematics?”
“I worked with NASA for a while. Got tired of Florida. Too many strange people. My wife’s from Charlotte so we moved back to North Carolina.”
“Does your wife work in town?”
“With me. Yes. Both kids go to school in town. We all drive in together so the house is empty all day.”
“And the robbery?”
“We came home three weeks ago and found the back door broken in. There was a lot of hair on the broken glass and frame and muddy footprints on the rug. Big feet. They kind of wandered through the house, ended up in the bedroom where the trousers were on the bed. I was going to be doing a charity appearance for the Sydneyville Blue Ridge Hospice Tag Team Race the night the pants disappeared.”
“The pants were stolen?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m not sure. A lot of stuff was knocked over and scattered. Not like someone was dumping drawers looking for money or anything like that. More like the kitchen table overturned and the salt and pepper shakers bouncing all over the floor with napkin rings and a coffee cup full of spoons.”
“But nothing else was missing?”
“I have a list of suspected items that are missing but I’m not absolutely sure that all are missing or that there are other small items missing that I don’t know about yet.”
“Let’s see the list.”
The Gnarly Gnome handed Noonan a list which the detective poured over, tilting his head back for the best use of his bifocals. He read the items off one at a time.
“Plastic handled bread knife.”
“I got it one summer in Paris, France. While I was with a circus. The lederhosen are from Germany. Same summer.”
Noonan looked down the list. “Lederhosen. Those are the short leather pants, right?”
“Yes. And very small and very worn. They are even too small for my boys.
“Those would be hard to pawn,” Noonan smiled. “Were the lederhosen out or in a closet?”
“I don’t know. I just know they are gone. Like I said, the list is an odd one.”
“Where are the lederhosen usually?”
“On a shelf in the closet.”
“Do they smell?”
“N-o-o-o-o, not that I know of. I can’t smell them. Why?”
“Well, I find it hard to believe that the Big Foot would paw through a closet looking for something specific that didn’t have a smell.”
“There are leather jackets in that closet so if the lederhosen smelled, so did the other leather jackets.”
“Humm. Noonan kept going down the list. “One sandal, opened bag of flour . . .
“Opened,” said the Gnome, “as in torn open. Not stolen, just torn open.”
“Any flour missing?”
“We don’t know. It was spilled and there were footprints in it. If any was stolen there’s no way to know.”
“I see.” Noonan kept reading. “pair of reading glasses, and a handful of grapes.”
“I’m pretty sure whoever was there was eating the grapes. I mean, why steal them?”
Noonan nodded. “You are right. It is an odd list. But these are the items that were stolen, right?”
“Well,” the Gnome paused, “it depends on what you mean by ‘stolen.’ If you mean spirited, away, yeah.”
“Do you have another definition?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call the flour stolen.”
Noonan thought for a moment. “That’s true. Damaged would be a better term. I guess I’d call the grapes damaged as well since they probably weren’t stolen in the traditional sense of the word.”
“That’s right,” said the Gnome.
“Well, what else was damaged but not stolen?”
That caught the Gnome by surprise. “That would be difficult to say. I mean, we filled out the Police Report with what was stolen. The damages for the insurance company were in the cumulative. That is, the insurance wanted to know how much damage was done in the dollar sense. The dollars weren’t high because there was no structural damage. So it was just the replacement of the stolen property, repair of the property that was damaged and a generic list of the damaged property that was not repairable.”
Noonan rolled the list of stolen property into a tube. “OK. What was damaged that could not be repaired?”
“Well,” the Gnome scratched his head. “There was the flour of course. Then there was some damage in the office. The desk mat was ripped apart, the desk calendar had its pages ripped out and tossed around, there were a handful of pens that were stepped on and broken and a painting was jerked off a wall with its frame broken.” The small man scratched his head as he thought. “There was also a broken flashlight. I keep a flashlight on the shelf behind my desk just in case the electricity goes out,” the Gnome added. “In the bedroom the sheets were pretty badly ripped and the stuff was pulled down out of the closet. That’s all I can think of. That’s all the stuff, repairable and not repairable.”
“Humm,” Noonan thought for a moment. “You said there were other, similar robberies.”
“If you mean do the police call them robberies, no. They call them pranks.”
“Same kind of damage?”
“Pretty much the same. Someone broke in, ran amuck, caused damage and left.”
“Was anything actually stolen in those incidents?
“Nothing big. Maybe some shiny things. Not much else.”
“But there was damage in other robberies – assuming we can call them robberies.”
“As far as I know. What the police said was that over the past six or seven weeks there had been about six break-ins with nothing of value stolen. That’s
what they said. I didn’t check it out.”
Noonan scratched his forehead with the paper tube he had made of the list of stolen items. He was silent for a moment and then he re-looked at the list. Finally he said, “Can I assume that the bread knife was in the kitchen?”
“Actually it was on the desk. I use it as a letter opener.”
“And the reading glasses?”
“One the desk as well.”
“Tell me about the layout of your house starting with the door that was broken in.”
“The door that was broken in was the kitchen door,” said the Gnarly Gnome from Nome. “The intruder apparently went around in the kitchen and then went into the office. After trashing the office he, she, it, whatever went into the master bedroom that is off the office. That’s where the pants were stolen.”
“Is there a living room off the master bedroom?”
“Yes. Under normal circumstances you’d come in front door into what we call the ‘Great Room.’ There’s a bathroom off to one side and the other two bedrooms are upstairs.”
“But the intruder only went through kitchen, office and master bedroom.”
“That’s right.”
“What kind of damage was done in the master bedroom?”
“None. Just the stolen trousers.”
“Was there any sign that the intruder went into the Great Room or the other rooms?”
“No. Just the opposite. He, she, it ripped open the flour so the footprints were visible and only in the kitchen, office and bedroom. Then whatever it was went out the broken door.”
“I’m going to assume that the footprints were kind of random until they got to the master bedroom and then went straight out the back door.”
The Gnome shook his head in disbelief. “How did you know that?”
Noonan smiled. “Because sometimes I am a clever man. OK, here’s what I want you to do for me. First, look for the lederhosen in the house. They have not been stolen, just misplaced.”
“How do you know that?”
“For the moment, trust me.”
“OK.”
“I need a complete list of everything that was on the desk, no matter how trivial.”