by Niecey Roy
“You’ve come to the right place,” I said, and Beverly let out a sigh of relief.
Lindsey cleared her throat. She wasn’t as open-minded as I.
“Lindsey.” I shot her a glance, warning her to zip it. “Do you need a glass of water?” She raised her brows. “For your cough.”
“Uh, no.” She fake-coughed, as if trying to clear her throat. “I’m fine.”
“This is great.” Linda beamed. “I looked you up on the Internet first to make sure you’d be right for our team.”
“You did?” I pressed my lips together to keep the smile from engulfing them. The emphasis she put on ‘Internet’ made the act itself sound as foreign as an alien.
Her head bobbed up and down. “Yup, we did. That boss of yours is a fine looking—”
“Linda.” Beverly gave her friend an impatient stare.
Unfazed, Linda said, “Also, I thought you might have an easy recipe for egg rolls. I love those things.”
“Linda,” Beverly said again.
“I’m Filipino,” I said, smiling. My Italian side was a little less prominent. All I inherited from my dad was a long nose with a light spattering of freckles, and height. At five foot eight inches, I towered over my mom. “Our rolls are called lumpia. I can give you a recipe, if you’d like.”
“Lumpia.” Linda’s eyes flashed with interest. “That sounds exotic.”
“They’re very good. I’ll get you a bottle of banana sauce too. For dipping.” I looked down to the notes I’d written on the legal pad I took from Lindsey’s desk. “Beverly, I’d like to get more information from you. The details are important.”
“Of course.” Beverly nodded, her gaze hopeful.
I handed the pad to Lindsey. “Add to my notes, please.”
“Right, notes. On it.” Lindsey placed the tablet in front of her, pen poised to write.
Three words from their recount of the cat’s disappearance kept flashing through my mind.
“So what you’re telling me—” I nodded over to Lindsey, whose lips were screwed up into a grimace, “—telling us,” I clarified, “Is that an alien, dressed in a thong, has been lurking around outside your house.” I paused, mostly for dramatic effect, and because what I was about to say made my hands quiver with excitement. “And this alien has abducted your cat.”
Beverly nodded. “Yes. Pretzels.”
“Right. Your cat, Pretzels.” I perched on the edge of Lindsey’s desk. “Beverly, can you tell me why this alien would want your cat?”
“Pretzels,” Linda corrected.
“Yes, Pretzels,” I said. “Why does the alien want Pretzels?
“Because that alien is a vindictive son of a bitch, that’s why.” Linda’s matter-of-fact tone made Beverly grimace.
I wasn’t an alien expert, and I didn’t know if aliens were vindictive by nature, so it seemed an important point to note. I nodded to Lindsey, “Write that down.”
Beverly was more sensible. “I know how crazy this must sound, Ms. Moss.”
“You can call me Roxanna.”
“Roxanna,” Beverly repeated. She lifted her chin in defiance. “I’ve gone over all of it in my head, so many times since Pretzels disappeared two nights ago. None of it makes sense. But I know what I saw outside my patio door a few nights ago, and now Pretzels is gone.”
“Okay, then,” I said with a nod.
Linda narrowed her eyes. “Those damn grey aliens—”
“Grey?” I perked up.
Now this was the kind of detail that was important. Last year, when Gen caught her weasel boyfriend cheating, she exchanged him for alien documentaries. Gen became a little obsessed with all things extraterrestrial while she mended her broken heart.
Who knew all those hours spent with extraterrestrial information piercing my optical nerves to the point of television migraines would ever come in handy in real life?
I cut my hand through the air, gesturing to Lindsey. “Write that down.”
“Write what down?” Lindsey stared at the paper already filled with unbelievable notes.
“Grey aliens,” I said.
“Okay.” Lindsey drew out the word.
“Lindsey, every detail is important,” I insisted. I turned my attention back to Linda and Beverly. “Don’t mind her.” I put my hand beside my mouth and whispered, loud enough for Lindsey to hear, “She’s not a believer. Also, she can’t parallel park.”
Parallel parking had nothing to do with this conversation, but I’d been teasing her ever since a recent twenty-minute attempt to parallel park at her niece’s school.
“Oh, one of those,” Linda said, leveling a sympathetic gaze on Lindsey. She turned her attention to me. “Greys are the worst kind, you know. We’ve been doing research.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that.” I wondered if they’d seen Gen’s favorite show, Aliens Lurking in Your Backyard. “Why are these grey aliens out for revenge, Beverly?”
“Because she refuses to be their sex experiment.” Linda’s eyes narrowed. “She’s too old for that crap. At our age, we’ve got bad joints.”
Beverly didn’t look so sure. “I don’t know if that’s what they wanted. They took my cat.”
“If those sickos aren’t doing sex experiments, they’re dissecting animals,” Linda insisted, and Beverly’s face paled.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, and picked up my cell phone off Lindsey’s desk. “Excuse me for a moment, ladies.”
I hurried from the lobby. Turning the corner into the hallway so I would be out of sight, I swiped at the cell phone screen then pressed the phone to my ear.
When Gen picked up, I said, “Get your ass down here. We have a sighting.”
“What?” In a whisper, Gen said, “I’m at work.”
I scrunched up my nose, confused why she hadn’t jumped all over what I’d said.
“Some things are more important than work,” I insisted, pacing the hallway. I was a pacer.
“Rox,” Gen said on a sigh, “I love you, but I can’t ditch work to go shopping or day drinking, or whatever it is that you’ve decided we should go do in the middle of the week.”
“Imogen Mae, I’m insulted.” Though I wasn’t. I loved to do all of those things. But this was serious. She needed to get with it. I paced the hallway. “This is serious shit. Like an alien sighting encounter kind of serious.”
She drew in a breath and it whistled through the phone’s speaker.
“An alien encounter,” she repeated. “What kind?”
I slowed mid-step and cocked my head. “Are you serious right now?”
“Yes,” she said, exasperated. “What kind?”
“Of the fourth kind.” I would never forget the last movie Gen made me watch, apparently based on real life events—I had nightmares for a week, which said a lot since I write paranormal fiction. I never planned to visit Nome, Alaska, not after all the research I’d done on the area. Apparently there were hundreds of unexplained disappearances—alien abductions—in that town.
In Gen’s silence, I scrunched up my nose. “Or maybe it’s the third kind. I don’t know. That’s why I need you. Why aren’t you saying anything? ”
“Sorry. I was in shock. Holy shit. This is big.”
“I know. Why aren’t you in your car already?”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. I need to come up with a good excuse.”
“You’re quitting anyway so just tell them the truth, no matter how crazy it sounds.” I paused for dramatic effect. “We’re solving an alien mystery.”
She mumbled something about using a dentist appointment excuse and then hung up on me.
I stepped back into the lobby where Lindsey entertained Linda with her parallel parking story.
“Would you ladies like a nice cup of coffee while we wait for my partner?” I asked as I approached. “She’s our expert on all things extraterrestrial, so I’d really like her thoughts on your case.”
“We have an extraterrestrial expert now?” Lindsey as
ked, her voice shaking with restrained laughter. “I love this job.”
“We have on-call experts for everything, Lindsey,” I said in a serious tone, mostly for Linda’s and Beverly’s benefit. I gestured for them to follow me to the hallway. “We have an espresso machine that makes the best lattes.”
“That sounds divine,” Beverly said.
“I can even make a fancy leaf in the latte foam.”
“Ooh,” Linda said, impressed.
I shortened my steps to match their gait.
“I have a friend who owns a café.” I led them down the hall to the break room and the espresso machine. “He does all sorts of awesome stuff with the foam, but I’ve only mastered the leaf.”
I wondered if the espresso, or my measly foam leaf, would clinch this pair of friends as clients. I didn’t want them taking their case to anyone else—though there probably wasn’t another PI firm in town who would consider taking on a catnapping case involving possible extraterrestrials.
Chapter Three
Gen made it to LM Security in record time. For Gen, a sighting was a big deal. Her sisters mostly tolerated her alien talk because of their blood relation and obligation to be supportive. Solving an alien abduction and proving the existence of extraterrestrials might convince them to be more serious about the subject.
While Beverly retold her story, Gen’s body coiled with excitement. She rocked back on her heels and pressed her lips together, as if biting back the urge to interrupt. Her short blonde hair was pinned up with clips and her violet colored bangs framed her face. Linda kept glancing at Gen’s hair when she wasn’t interjecting to add her own flare to Beverly’s story. I could see Linda with purple hair, and I had a feeling she was imaging it, herself.
Once Beverly finished, Gen said, “Sounds legit to me.”
I raised my brows. She didn’t sound like an extraterrestrial expert. I shoved the toe of my high heel into the side of her shoe.
Gen cleared her throat. “I mean, I totally believe your story.”
Apparently, this was the best expert impersonation I would get out of her.
“Of course you do,” Linda said, as if to say otherwise would be absurd.
“My reward for finding Pretzels is fifteen thousand dollars,” Beverly announced.
My jaw dropped. “Fifteen thousand? That’s—”
Gen shoved me out of the way to shake Beverly’s hand.
“We’ll take it!” Gen pumped Beverly’s arm with enthusiasm.
“Why don’t you leave your contact information with Lindsey?” I said, while apprehension wormed its way under my skin. “I’ll stop by this afternoon to take a look around your property.”
Lindsey recorded Beverly’s contact information, but Linda didn’t seem to want to leave. She talked me into a tour of the firm. I didn’t show her the room where Leo kept all equipment for the security side of the business though—pepper spray, flak jackets, wrist restraints, and all that fun stuff. I had a pretty strong feeling Linda would’ve wanted to touch everything.
After they were gone, I turned to Lindsey and Gen and said, “Alien hunting should be on every PI’s curriculum vitae.”
“Should I leave a copy of the file on Leo’s desk?” Lindsey placed the page of notes onto the face of the copy machine behind her desk. The machine whirred to life when she pressed the Copy button.
“Um . . .” I exchanged a worried glance with Gen. Keeping the case from Leo was a bad idea.
Gen grimaced. “Didn’t he just unground you?”
“A couple of months ago,” Lindsey said, handing me the original notes and the photocopy.
“I was benched, not grounded.” I began pacing in my purple heels. “Shit, this is a dilemma.”
And the reason why I was a little apprehensive when Gen cut in and told Beverly we’d take her case. I wasn’t the boss; I wasn’t even a private investigator. I was his assistant. My card said: Roxanna Moss, Private Investigative Associate. I had to run every case by Leo before accepting. Especially a case involving aliens.
I was lucky to have a job. Last year I accidentally tased someone. There were some other bad decisions made that night, too, and I was lucky my friends and I weren’t thrown in jail. I was kind of notorious for making rash, sometimes unfortunate decisions—something I had to work on. Call it a self-improvement initiative.
Now that I had my privileges back, and my very own business card, I was on my best behavior. I ran all my cases by Leo first, and when my surveillance cases were slow, I took afternoons off to write. Life was good. I freakin’ loved my job.
I really didn’t want to get myself grounded again . . .
“Of course I’ll tell Leo about this case.” I stopped pacing to face them with a shrug. “I’ll just leave out the alien bit. No big deal. Mostly, I’m just looking for a cat.”
“Yeah. It’s not that important of a detail.” Gen’s toothy grimace told me she wasn’t entirely certain.
“Aliens aren’t an important detail?” Lindsey asked, sitting down behind her desk.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
Her brow hitched. “Grey aliens wearing thongs?”
Okay, when she put it that way, it did sound like a big detail.
I shook my head. You’re just psyching yourself out. The reward was good enough reason to take on the case. Fifteen thousand dollars was a number Leo would understand.
“I don’t think anyone would make up a story like this,” I said.
“Sure,” Lindsey said. “A crazy person would.”
“I thought she sounded sane,” Gen said.
“Even Beverly admitted how off the wall it all sounded.” My brain ticked over all the details of the case so far. “And Linda believes her.”
“Yeah,” Lindsey drew out. “But I think Linda wants to find an alien.”
Another good point. Linda did seem very excited about the alien angle.
“The point is that I think Beverly’s telling the truth about what she thinks she saw.” I tapped the notes in my hand. “And she appears normal.”
“Lots of crazies seem normal,” Lindsey said. “Haven’t you ever watched Snapped?”
“True,” Gen agreed with a nod.
The fact was, Beverly’s cat was missing, and she needed help finding him. Wasn’t that what our firm was all about? Helping people? Finding people? Well, in this case, a cat.
But still. . .
Lindsey wiggled the mouse on her desk and the computer monitor switched on. “Both of you believe her story?”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.”
A few minutes before Linda and Beverly arrived I read a note in the X-files about a man who claimed he was haunted by his reincarnated twin. He claimed his twin died at birth and was jealous of his flower garden, so he came back as his gardener and killed his lilies. The note-taker wrote ‘man’s got crazy eyes’.
Beverly didn’t have crazy eyes. She’d seemed like a very nice woman who loved her cat.
“You know, this case could be just the thing I need to cure my writer’s block,” I said with a smile. “The perfect case.”
“Vindictive grey aliens who come down from a spaceship to steal her cat because she refuses to be a sex experiment?” Lindsey chuckled. “Seems a bit out there.”
“Well, that was Linda’s reasoning, not Beverly’s,” I reminded.
“But alien hunting?” she asked.
“Lindsey, just because you can’t parallel park doesn’t mean I can’t be an alien hunter,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.
“Exactly,” Gen said. “People can be so close-minded.”
“Amen.” I stuck my fist out, and Gen tapped her knuckles against mine. I began pacing again, and let myself feel the excitement I’d been suppressing with my worry over what Leo might think if he found out about the little alien detail. I waved the notes still clutched in one hand. “Think about it. This alien has been lurking around. Then her cat disappears. Something is up, and it’s probably a spaceship.”<
br />
Gen nodded. “Flying saucer or triangle shaped. I saw a YouTube video about lights that hovered over a city in Mexico. There were three of those bastards just hanging around for like an hour.”
“And it’s up to us to save her cat—” I rounded the corner of Lindsey’s desk and whirled her chair so that she faced me. I took her by the shoulders and gave her a small shake, “—and probably her life.”
“These aren’t the cute green aliens who want peace, Lindsey.” Gen gave her the peace sign. “These are grey aliens. They want complete domination. They’ll deplete our natural resources before burning our world to the ground.”
She’d recited the plot to the last alien movie she made me watch. Gen was a scaredy-cat, so she spent most of the movie with her hands over her eyes, peeking through her fingers, leaving me to endure it on my own.
Lindsey shook her head. “You two watch too much TV.”
I tapped my forehead. “Writer’s research.”
“Knowledge is power,” Gen added.
“Right.” Lindsey grinned. “I love how you two have rationalized this. I’m almost excited for you.”
“See? Doesn’t it feel good to be a believer?” Gen asked.
“I said almost,” Lindsey reminded.
“The point to all this is that a very nice woman lost her cat.” When I was ten, my cat ran away. I was devastated. He never came back. Fifteen thousand dollars was an indication of how much Pretzels meant to Beverly. I pictured her sad and lonely in her retirement community, with nothing but oatmeal cookies and daytime soap operas for company. And Linda. I supposed with Linda around she wouldn’t be lonely. But that doesn’t mean she won’t miss her cat.
I added, “It would be cruel of me not to help her.”
“You’d be a monster,” Gen said.
“Deplorable,” I added.
“Unacceptable,” Gen said.
“This is a woman’s companion.” I threw my hands up. “This is about Pretzels, who is lost and scared somewhere.”
“Possibly on a spaceship,” Lindsey added with a snicker. She was not being serious about this.
