The Seaside Detective Agency_The funniest Cozy Mystery you'll read this year

by J. C. Williams

  “Did you get a restraining order against you?” asked Abby, a question she didn’t expect to be posing.

  “No,” replied Sam in a frightened whisper.

  “Well then, you’re fine,” Abby assured him. “Just don’t go near the old woman’s house this time.”

  “No danger of that,” Sam replied, flinching as something akin to a pee shiver ran through him.

  “Nice houses!” Abby said cheerily, looking up and down the street. “I could definitely see me living in this neighbourhood.”

  Sam’s thoughts drifted off into a more pleasant direction, as he imagined carrying Abby on their wedding day over the threshold of their opulent, newly-purchased house.

  “Sam! Are you with me?” asked Abby.

  “Yes, definitely,” Sam answered dreamily. “Hang on, what? Yes, who? What were we…?” he continued, after snapping out of his reverie. “Ah. Of course. I’m right here with you. Ready for action. At your service!”

  “What did I say, then?” asked Abby in reply, in the sort of tone all mothers and most school teachers had perfected to an art.

  Sam lowered his head. “I, em… I wasn’t listening. Sorry,” he said, timidly.

  Abby issued forth an exaggerated sigh before carrying on. “Which way was Emma Hopkins heading?” she asked in the exasperated manner one might speak to a slow-witted child that was nevertheless well-loved. “When you saw them walking down the street.”

  Sam pointed, indicating the general direction he’d seen Emma Hopkins going. “But just make sure we don’t go near that house, just there. That’s the old sea witch’s house,” he added.

  “Oh, there’s no we here. You’re staying in the car,” informed Abby. “We need to find out where they’d been staying, and the last thing we need is to be arrested in the process.”

  “That’s fine,” said Sam, pulling something from his jacket pocket.

  Abby’s attention was elsewhere as she tried to figure out which house she should approach first. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel in quick succession, with the chorus of light thumps sounding like rain on the roof. “I think I’ll knock on that door,” she said, finally. “I’ll make out like I’m due to meet my new work colleague, but I’ve forgotten which house they’re in. I’ll describe Emma, and, hopefully, someone must know where they were.”

  Abby looked to Sam for approval, and nearly smashed her head off the driver’s side window as she did a double-take.

  “What the fucking fuck are you wearing??” she asked, half in shock and half with uncontrollable laughter. “Oh, my god, where’s my camera!”

  Sam’s lower lip drooped, along with his pride. “I thought it’d help me. You know. With surveillance, and all that.”

  “A bloody wig! What on earth possessed you to go and buy a wig? Oh, I can’t get out of the car now,” said Abby, who by now had a flood of tears running down her face. “I can’t breathe,” she said, snot bubbling at the bottom of her nose. “My stomach,” she said gasping. “You bastard, I’m in pain, I can’t look at you.”

  This continued for the next few minutes. It was like the first time you wear your glasses in public; you’re not sure if you’ll get a compliment, or, in this case, for Sam, the absolute and complete shit ripped out of you.

  “My jaw hurts. Oh, my jaw hurts…” continued Abby, wiping tears from her cheek and still in uncontrollable spasms of mirth. “What the hell? It doesn’t even fit! And the fringe, you look like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber… AH-HA-HA!” she screamed. “That’s it, I’m going to call you Lloyd from now on!”

  Several more minutes, once again, passed by for Sam, as Abby now had her head buried into the steering wheel, with her shoulders heaving.

  “Look,” said Sam, by way of explanation. “When you’ve not, you know, got a lot of grass on the pitch, a baldish head can stand out in a crowd. That’s not very good if you’re trying to be discreet. As we are now.”

  “Trust me,” said Abby, the tears at last subsiding. “You’re not looking discreet wearing that. If you’re seen in public wearing that, you’ll end up on some sort of register. I’m not entirely sure which. In fact, they may have to start a new one just for you!”

  It was impossible for Sam to get angry at Abby, and so he accepted the constructive feedback — or sustained assault — and moved to remove the offending article. “It was quite nice, at least, having a covering on top once again if only for a bit,” Sam confided. But, then… “Cheese and crackers, it won’t budge.”

  “You’ll sort it out,” Abby assured him. “I need to go and knock on a few doors. Stay in the car, and try to keep out of sight.”

  Sam bobbed his head up and down as he continued to struggle in his efforts to remove the wig — which Abby took to mean a nodding of agreement. She chuckled as she stepped out and closed the door behind her, shaking her head in dismay. “Lloyd,” she said to herself. “Amazing. Honestly, you’ll be the death of me yet, Sam Levy.”

  Sam folded down the sun visor and took what he imagined to be one final look at the wig. “It’s not that bloody awful,” he said. “Not entirely, anyway.”

  He pulled at the wig once again, trying his darnedest to tug it off, but it didn’t budge. He wondered if he was gripping it correctly? He looked in the mirror, once again, and repeated the process. “Damn,” he said, as his head jerked each time he yanked, but the wig refused to come off.

  He took a firm hold and braced his neck as he yanked it once again, but there was no give. He was now in a pitched battle with his own head — rather like a dog waging war against its own tail — and, unfortunately for Sam, his head appeared to have the upper ground. He rocked back and forth like a madman, his hands held to the side of his head like he was in abject turmoil.

  “Yes!” he said as the wig finally gave way. Sam had two clumps of hair in his hands, but, to his horror, discovered that the wig was still in situ, albeit now with a patch of hair missing from it. The glue Sam used was stronger than he’d suspected. In his haste to secure the wig in the first place, some of the residual, sticky substance had remained on his palms and now, as it turnt out, fused hair directly to them. As such, he was starting to look like a pre-pubescent Chewbacca, and, in fact, he let out a very Wookiee-like groan.

  His scalp was starting to burn, and his situation was getting more desperate. His eyes darted around the car looking for something to pry the wig away from his head, but there was nothing obvious. He rummaged around the glove compartment. “Ah-ha,” he said, gratefully clapping eyes on a large plastic ruler.

  His hairy palms, unfortunately, meant that purchase was challenging, and the ruler slid through his grasp every time he tried to use it to prise the wig loose. After several failed attempts — and the formation of a graze on his forehead — he was eventually able to secure a firm hold on the device. He wiggled the ruler and used a sawing action to cut the fabric free from the skin.

  The ruler moved relatively freely for a moment or two — and Sam gave a sigh of relief — but then it felt like he was stirring treacle as the glue claimed its second victim. The ruler wouldn’t shift and stuck firm. “Fudge!” Sam cursed.

  He heard a dog bark in the distance and felt a moment of déjà vu, praying that the woman from the previous encounter was not out on her daily walk. The car door opened right at that moment, startling Sam and causing him to nearly snap the ruler still in his hand.

  “I’ve found the house,” announced Abby, climbing back into the car. She looked at Sam's head… down to his hairy hands… and back up to his head. “Seriously, Sam?” was all she could manage, and her eyes drew up to the wig’s fresh bald patch.

  Sam held out his hands to her to reveal where the hair had ended up. “It’s stuck,” he said miserably.

  Abby put her hand to her cheek. “Oh my,” she said calmly, before raising the tone of her voice once again. “Sam! You do know you’ve got a ruler sticking out the front of your head? You look like a Dalek! A bloody Dalek with alopecia!” The more sh
e spoke, the stronger her voice became, like a steam train gaining speed as its fire was stoked. “Now come here!” she ordered.

  Sam did as he was told, and, with her favourable angle and a bit of leverage, Abby was able to rip the ruler loose. But the scream that Sam produced would remain with her for a long time, and she dared go no further.

  “You’ll have to wear my baseball cap,” she insisted.

  “But it’s pink,” Sam protested.

  “I don’t care what colour it is. If you think I’m breaking into a house on my own, you’re very much mistaken. And there’s no way we’re breaking in with you looking like that.”

  Sam had panic in his voice. “We’re breaking in?”

  Abby nodded her head. “Indeed we are. So come on, Teen Wolf, and let’s see what we’re up against.”

  A gullible neighbour, or perhaps someone who just wanted Abby off their porch, had confirmed that one of the houses was regularly leased out on a short-term let.

  “This is it,” said Abby after they’d walked a short distance. It was three doors down from the house that Sam had previously entered in error. “The neighbour thought it was being used as a brothel,” Abby carried on. “Until she learned from the owner that it was being rented out on Airbnb. Most importantly, she said she’s seen a well-dressed woman, and a man who looked like he’d gotten lost on a fox hunt.”

  “Fox hunting is cruel,” Sam interjected.

  “They’ve been here for a few days,” Abby stated, ignoring the interruption. “Come on,” she said, walking up the path like she owned the place.

  “What are you doing? We should sneak in the back, surely?” said Sam.

  Abby shook her head. “No. I’ll knock on the door, and I’ve got a funny feeling that nobody’s going to be in.”

  Sam shuffled uneasily, attempting to pull the pink cap further over the wig, as Abby rattled the substantial door knocker. Several more attempts and it was clear the house was, in fact, unoccupied.

  “Can you pick a lock?” asked Abby.

  “What? Of course I can’t pick a lock, can you?”

  “Well, no. Let’s go round the back and see if there’s either an open window or a door we can kick in.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped. “What? We can’t break in, we’ll end up in jail!”

  “I told you we were breaking in,” Abby replied.

  “Yes, but when you said break in, I didn’t know you meant actually break in!”

  “We need to get in that house, it’s our only hope,” she told him. “You stay here, and shout if you see anything.”

  “But Abby!” Sam objected, but it was too late as she had already left him.

  He scanned the street for activity, but it was quiet. He looked suspiciously at the garden gnome staring up at him from the front garden, with its smugly cheerful grin, and had a flashback to falling in the neighbour's pond. “Little red-hatted bastards,” he said, kicking out.

  He didn’t mean to catch it as truly as he did, and the gnome’s head came clean off. “Oh dear, now I’ve gone and done it,” he said, stooping down to see if he could perform life-saving surgery. “If only I had some glue!” he remarked, chuckling to himself.

  He lifted the gnome’s headless torso and, there, on the ground where it had sat, a little silver wonder sparkled in the sun. “Well, hello, my little beauty,” spoke Sam lovingly. It wasn’t just him that was stupid enough to hide the front door key under a garden ornament, it seemed, and he was happy for it.

  At the front door now, he took a quick look over his shoulder, and then gingerly pushed the key into the lock. In a glorious instant, the mechanism slid, and he pushed the door open.

  “Hello, maintenance man!” he shouted, in case he needed a motive for being there — though not that any idiot would believe his credentials. Satisfied, he closed the door behind him and made his way into the lounge. There were two cups sat on the coffee table.

  He stopped in his tracks when he heard a groaning noise, and for a moment thought the occupants were upstairs, perhaps enjoying each other’s company to put it politely. He heard it again, and every fibre in his body was telling him to retreat, but he pressed on. The noise was coming from the kitchen.

  “Maintenance man?” he repeated, more tentatively this time, as he padded over and poked his head through the kitchen door.

  There was a grunt now, as he stepped into the kitchen. It was close. Too close. Sam’s muscles — what there were of them — tensed, ready to spring to action. “Oof!” came the response. Sam spun round on his heel, towards the sound of certain peril, to face the threat. He had to. For Abby’s sake, he had to.

  “Abby?” Sam called out in a reedy timbre, with nerves apparent in his voice. “Abby, what the hell are you doing?”

  Abby had the top half of her body dangling through the kitchen window, with her bottom half hanging precariously out of the other side. “I’m stuck!” she said desperately. “Help me, will you?” she pleaded.

  Sam didn’t need to be asked twice as he darted to her assistance. He nestled his head into her neck and put his hand under her armpits. “Get ready,” he said, as he began to apply pressure. “This might hurt a little.”

  She was stuck — like the ruler, earlier — but eased gradually through.

  “Ow,” she said. “Hang on, my trousers are catching on something.”

  But there was no going back, as Sam struggled under the increasing weight.

  “My trousers are being pulled off,” said Abby frantically. “You need to stop. Sam, you need to stop!”

  “I can’t bloody stop, you weigh a ton, I need to get you through!”

  “I weigh a ton, do I?”

  “Not now, Abby! Let’s just agree I always say the wrong thing, right? I’ve got to… *urmph*… just hang in there, I’ve got to…”

  Every inch Abby progressed saw her trousers pulled down lower. Eventually, she hung down low enough to use her hands to somewhat support herself on the kitchen worktop. By this time, however, her trousers were now by her ankles and her ankles were still by the window opening.

  “Sam, you need to unhook my trousers from the window,” she said with her arms starting to quiver under the strain. “And if you look at my arse, I’ll bloody kill you.”

  Sam stepped up, and he wrestled with her trousers — which finally came free after a bit of fussing, as it was just a matter of attacking them from the proper position. Sam helped her into the kitchen, and, once standing, she immediately reached down to pull her trousers back up.

  Once she’d gotten herself back together, she pointed a finger at Sam. “Were you faffing about just so you could get a look at my bum?” she demanded.

  “No! Of course not!” Sam protested. Well, maybe a little, he thought to himself.

  Abby continued to adjust herself, pulling on the waist of her trousers while wiggling her hips. “This’ll never feel right again. Dammit,” she said. “Wait. Hang on a second,” she added, abandoning the battle with her trousers. “How the hell is it that you’re in the kitchen??”

  Sam smiled. “There was a key hidden under the gnome.”

  “What, people still actually do that?” she answered, before going quiet for a moment.

  Sam shifted nervously from foot to foot. He didn’t like it when Abby wasn’t talking. In his experience, if a woman suddenly went quiet, it meant he was likely to be shouted at shortly thereafter.

  “So why didn’t you come and tell me before I tried to get through the window??” she shouted at him.

  Sam didn’t respond. He was trying to think of a response that wouldn’t make her angry. He was trying to think… but nothing was happening.

  “Are you still thinking about my knickers?” demanded Abby.

  It was as if she could read minds!

  “A little bit, yes,” Sam admitted, casting his eyes down to the floor. “I mean, only a little. I promise.”

  “There’s two cups in the lounge,” he said, deftly changing the subject. “And from the l
ook of this kitchen, the people who left had every intention of returning. Let’s split up. You take upstairs and I’ll do down.”

  Sam felt every inch the intrepid investigator as he diligently lifted items with his pen so as to preserve any forensic details intact. He had no plan what to do with those items afterwards, but he knew Abby would be impressed if she saw him doing it. He worked methodically through the kitchen, lounge, and the downstairs toilet — although the latter was rather out of necessity.

  Once he’d determined the downstairs loo was in full working order — for scientific purposes, of course — he was about to shout to Abby to see if there was anything of interest upstairs when he remembered he’d seen a garage earlier and thought it best to check it out.

  The garage door was concealed at the rear of the utility room. Sam listened to the door for a moment — it felt like the right thing to do — before easing the door open. It was dark as he fumbled around, unsuccessfully, for a light switch. The only illumination came from that penetrating the frame of the larger garage door. He could just make out a table and chair in the middle of the floor as he reached for his phone to light the way.

  “Where’s the bloody light switch?” he called into the darkness, getting frustrated. “Ah,” he said, satisfied, in reference to the murky outline of a dangling object on the wall, certain it was a light fixture. He reached for it and tugged on it, fully expecting to be bathed in luminosity… but it was attached to a solid item, further up, rather than a light bulb, and it crashed to the floor.

  It was heavy and made quite a commotion as it hit the concrete surface, resulting in the flapping of wings from outside as nearby birds took flight in distress — as well as the cry of a bird, very near, apparently trapped inside the garage.

  “Underpants!” Sam screamed at the noise. He didn’t usually use underpants as a curse word, but it was the first thing that came to mind for some reason.

  He jumped back, holding his hands behind him to guide the way, but he made contact with glass jars sat on top of a table — until confronted with the likes of Sam, at least — jars that promptly smashed to the floor, sousing him in some sort of liquid in the process.