The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo

by Steve Levi

“That too. I just want to make sure Louie’s safe. Even more important. I’m betting the ring is stolen and the person who owns it doesn’t know it’s missing yet. I’m also worried that whoever put the ring into the aquarium will be coming back for it. If he can’t get it out easily he’s likely to break the aquarium. Then there goes Louie.”

  “Well, let me take a look at the aquarium.”

  “This is your lock?” Noonan said in astonishment when he saw the salt water fish tank. “This is a padlock! A second-rate burglar could open this up with a pick as fast as you can open it with a key.”

  “Well! It’s the best that I could do!”

  Noonan tapped on the aquarium. “In our office lingo, this is a crackerjack box. Having that lock does not mean anything. Anybody could have jimmied it open.”

  “OK. Maybe. But someone put the ring in the tank.”

  Lt. Blakely was the best-looking man on the Sandersonville Police Force. He was a blend of every ethnic group on the planet, stood a few inches over six feet, was a marathon runner, weight lifter, had an MBA from Stanford and lived in Sandersonville because his father had Alzheimer’s and his mother needed the extra income to take care of the ailing man. He was also single which made a very big difference to the women of Sandersonville, Harperville, Marvin City, Harrisonburg and every other community on the North Carolina coastline that he visited on official business.

  “You wanted to see me, chief?” Blakely said to Noonan when he came in from his peripatetic duties.

  “Like fish?” Noonan was never good on niceties.

  “Catching or eating?”

  “Watching.”

  Blakely was silent for a moment. “I can’t say I’ve ever watched fish. Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Maybe. I have a special assignment for you. It’s a casual assignment in the sense that it’s something you should be doing while you are out and around.”

  “As in out and around on duty?”

  “Whenever and wherever.”

  “OK,” he paused for a moment and then said, “Is this a trick question?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “I don’t like answers like that.”

  “I know how you feel. Here’s the problem. A valuable object appeared in a fish tank. No one knows how it got there. It could have been dropped in. It could have been left by aliens. I don’t know. But the one thing I do know is that whoever did the dropping does not live in Sandersonville.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m psychic.”

  “I can live with that. And you want me to . . .” Blakely let the sentence hang.

  “While you are perambulating up and down the coastline, stop in at a few pet stores and see if anything strange has occurred. See what’s cooking in the fish business. Actually, cooking is not the right verb. How about what is happening in the fish business?”

  “Yes, sir. And it’s a gerund.”

  “What is?”

  “Cooking. It’s a gerund, not a verb.”

  Noonan chuckled. “Don’t you have something to do?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m shuffling on out. That’s another . . .”

  “Gerund. I know.”

  Eight days later Noonan got a call back from Blakely.

  “I know why you sent me on this assignment, chief.”

  “Really,” Noonan feigned ignorance. “Why is that?”

  “There’s a North Carolina Pet Association that is very active. And I mean very active. As a matter of fact it was having its annual convention in Harperville. But I guess you didn’t know that.”

  “Really?” Noonan yawned. “Isn’t that interesting.”

  “Yeah,” snapped Blakely over the electronic phone lines that did not exit. “I’ll also bet you didn’t know that pet store owners are about 99% female.”

  “Really?” Noonan shook his head. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, sir. When people told me you were devious I wasn’t sure what they meant. Now I know.”

  “Really? How interesting. Did you find out anything of importance?”

  “Of importance, I don’t know. But you asked for strange occurrences and robberies. Strange occurrences, yes. Every pet store owner has a dozen. Most of them involve exotic pets I have never heard of. Robberies, a few but hardly unusual. There was a rash of pet food hijackings. I had no idea pet food had that kind of a markup, by the way. A couple of cases of yet-to-be assembled aquariums were broken and about 20 pounds of the stuff you put in aquariums was smashed and scattered. There was an absolute rash of duck breast strip and chicken breast strip robberies. It was odd because the packages were opened. That meant the contents could not be sold so the strips were given to the local ASPCA. Other than that there was a lot of shoplifting of small stuff like fish food containers, flea powder and I know you will not believe this, ratsicles.”

  “What’s a ratsicle?”

  “It’s a frozen rat. The whole rat. Frozen solid.”

  “What do you do with a ratsicle?”

  “Apparently pet pythons love them.”

  “Where were these robberies? Particularly the duck and chicken breast strip and the yet-to-be assembly aquariums.”

  “Yaupon City. Just like the . . .”

  “I know what Yaupon is. When did the thefts occur? At the same time or months apart?”

  “About a week apart. Last April. Let me see.” Noonan could hear what sounded like pages of a notebook being shuffled. Then Blakely was back on the line. “April 10th for the aquarium robbery. Eight months ago. It was discovered fairly quickly. The duck and chicken breast break-in was discovered on the 15th. It was discovered then so the actual damage would have been done earlier.”

  “Good work, Blakely. Go get lucky.”

  “Sir, what do aquarium parts and exposed duck strips have to do with anything in Sandersonville?”

  “That, lt., is a very interesting question.”

  If there was any one thing Noonan knew to be true it was that history was a tool. The roots of the future are deeply rooted in the past and the present did not exist. Present was only a description of the instant when the past becomes the future. He knew that if he wanted a see into the future, he had to look backwards. And the best place to look backwards was in the microfilm room of the Sandersonville Public Library.

  He went to the microfilm drawer and pulled out the month of April of the Yaupon City Gazette, a small local press that serviced all six dozen blocks of the hamlet, a community so minute mail delivery was only at the Post Office. Though Yaupon City was small it was important because it was at critical transportation crossroads. The largest industry in town wasn’t really a business. It was a warehouse. Cargo coming from ships along the seaboard was transported to the warehouse where it was parceled out to trucks moving inland. Cargo from across the country that had to be shipped by sea from North Carolina ports was bulked to Yaupon City where it was separated out by seaport and then trucked to that port. The warehouse was the largest employer in Yaupon City and the rest of the businesses in the city were support.

  While the city was small, it was large enough – and rich enough – to attract traveling shows. These shows were not as large as circuses but the city was on the Chautauqua circuit, one-man magician shows, small concerts, an occasional hypnotist, singers on tour for one-night stands and it did have a repertory theater building. Noonan had been through Yaupon City quite a few times and, like most residents of Sandersonville, was aware of the slur “Kinnakeeters, Yaupon Eaters!” He was also well aware of the consequences of drinking Yaupon tea; there was a very good reason its Latin name was Ilex vomitoria. Yaupon tea, like alcohol, is fine in small doses. VERY small doses.

  Rolling forward to April 9th he started reading the paper. The high school production of Hamlet was in its third and final week There was a magician with a trained chimpanzee in town, a trio of mimes and a Civil War historian discussing the Battle of Gettysburg with a 3D presentation that using both modern and historic phot
ographs. There were the usual deaths, births, social events and a couple of references to local award ceremonies and the weather reports.

  Next Noonan placed a call to the Yaupon City Police Department, a force of three, one of them being the office manager. She was a pleasant woman and the first thing she said when Noonan said he was from Sandersonville was “Yaupon is a fine tea no matter what they say in Kinnakeet.”

  “I know,” Noonan replied. “I have had Yaupon tea. Just not a lot of it.”

  The woman laughed. “I’m Shirley Hargreaves. What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “I’m not sure. Just some fishing.”

  “Fishing better in Sandersonville than here – particularly if you are after ocean fish.”

  “No Red Drum today. I’m calling to see if anything in particular happened in mid-April in Yaupon City. You know, thefts, burglaries, robberies. Anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary happens in Yaupon City. Last April, eh? Let me think. We haven’t had a robbery in about a year and most of the burglaries are related to drugs and we catch the perps fairly quickly. We have the usual: parking tickets, drunk drivers, drunk jay walkers, some petty theft. The only unusual thing that happened was a magician’s chimpanzee got loose for a night. He wasn’t gone long, let me tell you. The officers found him in a yaupon grove the next day and that chimp was sick, sick, sick. Other than that, nothing important.

  “Do you have a pet store in town?”

  “Two, actually.”

  “Do they sell fish?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about fish tanks, aquariums.”

  “Salt and fresh water. Everything from goldfish to Arowana. I’m a fish person. My husband likes dogs.”

  “The pet stores sell dog food?”

  “They sell everything. Yaupon City may be small but we are sophisticated.”

  Later that night Noonan – wearing a tie!!! – came for dinner at the Pamlico Lobster Pit with his wife Lorelei. Both took Lone by surprise: first, that Noonan was wearing a tie and, second, he was with his wife. Lorelei, an Alaskan who believed the only venerable crustacean was a King Crab caught in Alaskan waters, was leery of any creature from warm salt water.

  “A surprise I must say,” Lone said to Noonan.

  “Yes, I know.” He said. “Lorelei made me wear it.”

  “No, a surprise to see you more than once in a month. And with your wife.”

  “Well, duty calls. I have some more question for you but when I mentioned the Lobster Pit, well, here we are.”

  “And here you should be! I’ll be along in a while. When there’s a lull, we can talk.”

  Lorelei ordered crab cakes – commenting that she knew they would not be King Crab cakes – and Noonan ordered lobster – but not Louie. When they were through with their dinner, Lone came over for a chat.

  “Did you find who got into my aquarium?”

  “No one did. But I think I discovered how the ring got there.”

  “Do tell.”

  Noonan handed her a photocopy of an advertisement for Frank Blankenship, Magician extraordinaire and his trained chimp Speckles. Lone read the advertisement and then looked at Noonan questioningly.

  “Last April Blankenship was in Yaupon City. He had a three-day run and the night of Day Two, Speckles made a break for freedom. He was gone most of the night and the next morning the police found him in a Yaupon grove.”

  “In a yaupon grove? I’ll bet that was one sick monkey.”

  “You are correct.”

  “What does this have to do with the ring in Louie’s tank?”

  “Here’s what I think happened. I don’t know for a fact but I’ll bet part of the magician’s act involves a ring, the ring you found in Louie’s aquarium. The chimp saw his chance for freedom and he beat feet into the Yaupon City warehouse. He probably got into a number of duck strip and chicken strip packages because they were found opened a few days later and the contents had to be given to the ASPCA. He also rustled through the aquarium supplies because they were found disturbed. I’m betting Speckles had a ring the magician uses in his act and dropped it in the aquarium supplies. While the warehouse could not sell the open duck and chicken strip bags, it could scoop up the aquarium supplies that were not damaged . . .”

  “. . . like the rocks,” Lone said. “So the ring wasn’t dropped in from the top of Louie’s aquarium! It came in with the stones I used in the bottom of the salt water tank.”

  “That’s what I think too.”

  “I’ll bet that magician extraordinaire has been looking high and low for that ring!”

  “I think that too.”

  “I think I’ll give him a call. I’ll tell him I’ve got a magic trick he can’t match!”

  THE MATTER OF THE REAPPEARING COELACANTH

  Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was in a heated conversation with himself about the facts of life and how he was going to explain them to his twins when he was pulled back to reality when a large, stinking, molding fish was plopped on his desk by none other than the scourge of mankind, Commissioner Lizzard.

  “What do you make of this?” Lizzard was ecstatic. “It’s a coelacanth!”

  “OK,” said an unimpressed Noonan. “Are you going to eat it or stuff it?”

  “Neither. I am going to donate it to a museum.”

  “A fish?”

  “This is not just a fish. It’s a coelacanth.”

  “It looks and smells like a fish to me,” said Noonan smartly and then changed his tune when he saw Harriet over Lizzard’s shoulder. She was shaking her head and wiggling a finger. “And you are showing me this fish because . . .” he let the sentence hang.

  “First, it’s not a fish, it’s a coelacanth. You eat fish. This is a museum specimen.”

  “Because. . . .” Noonan let this sentence hang as well.

  “A coelacanth is an extinct animal. It was supposed to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs.”

  “But here it is,” said Noonan. “Not quite alive but it looks like it was alive so it could not be extinct.”

  “Exactly!” Lizzard became quite animated. “It was pulled from Pamlico Sound three days ago. A coelacanth! In Pamlico Sound! Three days ago!”

  “And this is a police matter because . . .” Noonan was getting good at hanging sentences today.

  “Because it is unclaimed property. No one is claiming it. So I am taking it to the Unclaimed Property Division. This is quite a coup, you know, having taking possession of the extinct fish.”

  “But it’s not extinct if you are holding it and it was living three days ago. The dinosaurs died out a lot longer ago than that.”

  Lizzard was not listening. He had turned toward Harriet and Lt. Weasel who wiped smiles off their faces faster than a Tyrannosaurus would swallow a titanosaur. “Aren’t you excited for Mother Nature?” he asked them. The two echoed something that have been and clearly was interpreted as “yes,” “of course,” “why not” and/or “most certainly.” Turning back to Noonan, Lizzard said, “We need to get a chain of ownership of this coelacanth.” He paused and then said, “for the records for unclaimed property.”

  “So,” said Noonan finally catching the drift, “you want me to drive down the coast of Pamlico Sound looking for someone who lost an extinct fish that was abandoned three days ago?”

  “Excellent,” Lizzard explained. “You are a wonder, Captain. You read my mind completely. You can start at Butterfield Deep Sea Excursions. They are the ones who reported finding the coelacanth.”

  “They found it. Don’t you mean they caught it?”

  “No. They said they found it. Better yet, why don’t you go ask them?” Noonan made a helpless gesture with his hands and indicated his desk covered with paperwork. Lizzard was impressed. “Go! Do your duty in the name of science!”

  Lt. Weasel was quick to chime in. “This appears to be a two-man operation, Commissioner. I’ll go with
the Captain.”

  “Excellent!” said Lizzard turning toward Noonan. “We have an investigative team!”

  “But it will need back-up,” said Harriet quickly. “So I am volunteering my services!”

  “Even better,” chortled Lizzard. “Now we have secretarial skills onboard as well!”

  Lizzard was facing Noonan so he could not see the daggers blasting out of Harriet’s eyes.

  It was an unbelievably horrible day to be away from the office. The temperature was in the mid-80s, there was not a cloud in the sky and every vehicle which contained a tourist was sequestered north of Virginia Beach. The roads were cluttered with sunshine and silence. Weasel made sure to collect both by driving the Sandersonville’s sole convertible with its top down. Weasel kept the car traveling at a steady 45 miles per hour and when Noonan suggested he speed up, Harriet, sitting in the passenger seat with sunglasses and her right hand full of a cold, canned daiquiri, remarked that “speed kills.” Noonan agreed so Weasel continued to drive a safe and sane 45 miles an hour all the way to Butterfield Deep Sea Excursions.

  And then the fun began.

  While there had not been many cars on the road to Butterfield Deep Sea Excursions, the parking lot at Butterfield Deep Sea Excursions was up to its gills in press vehicles. Noonan, Weasel and Harriet elbowed their way to the front of the mob. There was a guard at front holding back the press. Only after Noonan flashed his badge did the guard reluctantly let the three of them pass. Members of the press made unbroadcastable on-air comments as the trio made their way into the office of Butterfield Deep Sea Excursions.

  Butterfield, the old man himself, was beside himself with a mixture of glee and regret. “I’m happy the press is here,” he told Noonan after the captain had introduced himself, “because I can use the free publicity. But none of the press is going out and they are keeping customers from coming in.”

  “We’d be happy to go out,” Harriet said quickly. “After all, this is police business and you can bill the Sandersonville Police Department for your assistance.”