The Aztec mummy was withered and shriveled. The remnants of his raisin-like eyes were set deeply into hollows in his face. He hobbled along, his back bent, his knees of the extra-knobby variety. His clothes were gaudy and colorful, the finest Aztec chic. He extended a gnarled hand, and I shook it, careful not to break any bones. Mummies can be so brittle, and most refuse to be rehydrated as a matter of pride.
“How can I help you, Mr.—?”
The mummy cleared his throat, and a small moth fluttered out. “Kashewpetl.” I realized it was his Aztec name rather than a head cold. “And I need you to track down my turkey. A special wish turkey.” He leaned forward, and his intent raisin eyes transfixed me. “I need to have it by Christmas.”
“That’s the day after tomorrow,” I said.
“I know! We better hurry.”
We walked past an auto repair shop where two vampires were placing a large inflatable snowman in front of a sign that said: “Special Holiday Blowout Tire Sale!”
“I’m happy to hear your case, Mr. Kashewpetl.” It would certainly be better than my early morning duties.
I had just finished delivering a little holiday cheer—serving divorce papers to a recently separated reptile-demon couple. Due to financial circumstances, they were forced to cohabitate their single-family lair apartment, and the male reptile demon had hired Chambeaux & Deyer to take care of the paperwork. Robin had filed the correct forms, and I had to present the papers to the soon-to-be-ex-wife-demon. A formality, but it wasn’t one of my happiest duties.
The female reptile demon answered the door and took one look at my gray skin, my Fedora tilted down so that it mostly covered the bullet hole in my forehead. I tried to smile, but she curled back scaly lips to expose needle-like teeth. “What do you want? We’re not buying.” Her forked tongue flicked in and out.
“I assure you there’s absolutely no charge,” I said. “Mrs. Algotha? Frieda Algotha?”
A big, lumbering, scaly male demon lurked in the hall. “Who is it?”
“Some zombie selling subscriptions.”
“Not selling.” I handed her the paperwork. “Just serving.”
That was when she really went into a hissy fit, snapping and snarling, and her husband—our client—snarled just as loudly back at her. Their scaly tails lashed, smashing into the wall, cracking the plaster, knocking down knickknacks. Then the demons began blaming each other, and Frieda Algotha stormed off to lock herself in a room. “My mother always told me I should have married Bill!”
I stood there awkwardly, wanting very much to be in some different kind of hell. The big, ferocious crocodile guy sulked in the foyer. “I had to do it, Mr. Chambeaux,” he said, as if I were his bartender. He wore a big frown on jaws that looked powerful enough to snap a Volkswagen in two. “Christmas is always rough on cold-blooded creatures. This one’s going to be worse than usual.” He closed the door on me.
Give me a good murder (or re-murder) case, a missing creatures problem, a stolen items recovery any day. I hated divorce cases. I hoped the Aztec mummy had something a lot more interesting for me.…
“Would you like to meet me back at our offices? I can set up an appointment.” Sheyenne, my beautiful ghost girlfriend, is our office manager and organizes all of our paperwork. My human lawyer partner, Robin Deyer, has a caseload as large as mine.
When all the bizarre supernatural creatures returned to the world more than a decade ago during the unexpected cosmic event of the Big Uneasy, there had been quite an uproar until all the monsters settled into a semblance of normal life in the Unnatural Quarter. Everybody—naturals and unnaturals—just wanted to get through the days, and nights, as best they could, and even the unnaturals experienced as many everyday problems as regular people did. From our main offices, Robin took care of their legal needs, and I was handy whenever somebody needed a detective. A zombie detective.
“I would rather talk to you right now,” the mummy rasped. “Time is of the essence.” He indicated a sign in a clothing shop with giant painted letters touting: “Christmas Countdown! The End of the Sale Is Near!” He set off. “Let’s walk.”
Because his back was hunched, and his legs so bent, he moved with an exaggerated oscillating gait. “Are you sure?” I nodded to his stiff joints.
“It’s just the way I was made. Aztec mummies are bound up and preserved in a sitting position. Unlike those uppity Egyptian mummies, we’re naturally dried, not wrapped up in linens, and we’re buried in a cloth sack instead of stuffy sarcophagi and fancy tombs. Who needs a pyramid, anyway? And nobody scooped my brain out through my nose. It’s still perfectly intact, thank you.”
I could see I had struck a nerve, so I changed the subject. “Tell me about your turkey.”
We passed a group of banshee Christmas carolers who sang their hearts out, and all the nearby plate glass windows trembled in fear.
“Right, let me explain. I needed the wish turkey to get my favorite sled back,” said Kashewpetl, an explanation that did not serve the purpose of explaining anything.
“Your favorite missing sled?” I asked.
“My precious toy from when I was a boy. Ah, the good times I had, the perfect sled, constructed with the best jungle materials—the finest sled in the whole Yucatan! My cousins and I would climb the slopes of Popocatepetl, one of the largest volcanoes in Central America—seventeen thousand feet high! Great powder on the snow slopes, at least when Popocatepetl wasn’t erupting lava.”
The mummy let out a desiccated sigh. “Those were the best days of my life, innocent times, perfect days when my parents and I would go see the ritual temple sacrifice, when we kids would run through the jungle and play Dodge the Jaguar … when I had my first love—a girlfriend so special that I still remember her even a thousand years later.”
Another long sigh. This time, two moths came out of his lungs. “Sweet, beautiful Suzitoq. We used to sled together. I’d put her in front of me, and we’d slide down the treacherous ice slopes. When we got to the bottom, I would steal a kiss. Good times!” Then he grew much more somber. “Then she went sledding with one of my rivals, Burtputl, but he used a far inferior sled and it broke. Suzitoq tumbled over a cliff.” He hung his shriveled head. “I never forgave Burtputl.”
We passed a small stand where a saggy-faced ghoul was selling gray snow cones. I asked the mummy if he wanted one—he was my client, after all—but he shook his head and continued his story.
“Suzitoq is long dead now, but I kept that sled for the rest of my life as a reminder of those golden days. I never married, became a bitter old man—I admit it. I saved enough money so that I could be thoroughly mummified. But after I died, Burtputl stole my sled, and it’s been lost all these centuries. He probably wrecked it.” Kashewpetl snorted. “I’d do anything to have it back. That’s why I need your help, Mr. Chambeaux.”
“What does that have to do with a missing turkey?”
“Not just any turkey,” said Kashewpetl. “A wish turkey.”
That must be a key part to the case. “So what’s a wish turkey?”
“A special turkey that I raised from a chick. The Chosen One. I tattooed arcane symbols on its hide, tied special amulets to its feet to infuse the bird with the most potent Aztec magic. I pampered it, fattened it, even brought beautiful lady turkeys to his cage. It was necessary to give my wish turkey the most hedonistic lifestyle a turkey could want, considering what was to happen to him.”
I bought one of the brown snow cones from the ghoul vendor. I would rather have had a beer at the Goblin Tavern after work—and I intended to do so anyway—but for now I sucked on the dirty ice of the cone. “And what was going to happen to him?”
“Ritual sacrifice,” said Kashewpetl.
Of course.
“The holiday season holds a very special magic, a secret and fuzzy kind of Christmas magic. After I sacrificed my wish turkey, I could cook him up and extract the sacred wishbone. Then, if I cracked the wishbone, I could wish for anything I wanted
.” His shrunken raisin eyes blazed brighter. “I could have what I desired most in the whole world. I could wish for my sled back.”
I wondered why he wouldn’t simply wish for Suzitoq back, but I doubted the Aztec mummy had thought this through. So, I asked the more compelling question. “What on earth does an Aztec ritual sacrifice have to do with the magic of Christmas? The two aren’t the least bit connected, on either a cultural or a religious basis.”
Kashewpetl raised his arms so quickly I was afraid his elbow joints would snap. “One mustn’t question! One mustn’t doubt. One mustn’t think too hard about it, or the magic fades away. And the magic of the wish turkey wishbone is powerful indeed. Don’t diminish it, Mr. Chambeaux.”
I slurped on my brown snow cone, spit out a bit of gravel, and metaphorically zipped my lips shut. “It’s none of my business, and not part of the case. So tell me what happened. Your turkey’s gone missing?”
“Yes, he got out of his cage somehow. I never imagined he could figure it out—turkeys aren’t the brightest animals in the menagerie, you know. But I need him back in the next day or two, when the magic is strongest. He’s out there somewhere, probably lost and alone and hungry.”
“Did your wish turkey suspect what you were going to do to it? Did he know he was about to be sacrificed?” It would have given it the motive to flee.
Kashewpetl gave me a strange look. “There are times when he can’t even find his water dish right there in his own cage.”
“I see. Well, if you come by the offices later on—” We stepped across the street to get to the other side—I wondered if that was what turkeys did too, and for the same reason. I wasn’t watching, and suddenly a delivery truck barreled toward us. The truck driver honked his horn and swerved to avoid hitting us. I leaped to one side as I grabbed the mummy, since his hobbling gait was insufficient for leaping away from large careening vehicles.
The driver was a zombie wearing a trucker’s cap and work overalls. “Watch where you’re going, idiots!” He screeched to a halt, then leaned out the driver’s side window, ready to yell something else, then his face changed. “Dan? Dan Chambeaux? Man, I’m sorry about that.”
I recognized Steve Halsted, my “dirt buddy,” a zombie who had risen from the grave the same night I did. Recently, Steve had been running deliveries around the Quarter and he sometimes served as a long-haul trucker. “What’s your hurry, Steve? Driving that fast, you’re going to hit somebody who isn’t already dead.”
He looked flustered. “Sorry, I’m carrying a load of fresh ripe toadstools, and I’ve got to deliver them before the spores go bad. On my way!” He peeled off in the truck.
Kashewpetl said, “I’ll head back home to keep searching. Here’s where you can find me.” He wrote his address on a scrap of torn bandage that looked as if it had been ripped from an old Egyptian mummy, maybe out of spite.
“I have to get back to the office, then I’ll go file a police report,” I said. “We’ll find your turkey, Mr. Kashewpetl, and we’ll find him before Christmas, I promise.”
“Thanks. It just wouldn’t be a holiday season without a ritual sacrifice.”
Sitting at her desk in the Chambeaux & Deyer offices, Sheyenne was positively glowing when she saw me. Ghosts tend to do that. I gave her an air kiss, because that’s all we could do—our lips passed right through, but I felt an ectoplasmic thrill regardless. Since I was a zombie, it had been a long time since my heart went pitter-pat, but at least Sheyenne made it go thud a little faster.
“Papers served on the Algothas,” I said. “Not much Ho-Ho-Ho going on in that house today.”
“Sorry, Beaux. Not everybody can have a perfect relationship like us.”
“We don’t exactly have a perfect relationship, Spooky, considering we can’t even touch, or hold hands, or kiss, or do the stuff that happens after the ellipsis dots when the door closes at the end of an old romance novel.”
“Being intangible does have its drawbacks,” she admitted. She straightened the papers using her poltergeist power and stuffed them in a file. I told Sheyenne about Kashewpetl, and she filled out the paperwork for the intake of the new client, then scolded me for not discussing the appropriate fees. The mummy had looked so intense and distraught that I hadn’t had the heart, but I understood it was necessary.
Without Sheyenne keeping us on the commercial straight-and-narrow, Robin would be a sucker for sob stories and do every case as pro bono. She’s a bleeding-heart, which is why all the monsters in the Quarter come to her when they have a meaningful case. As a zombie, I was just as relentless as a detective, though a bit colder. Working together, we get the job done, solve the cases, and keep our customers satisfied.
“Robin’s with a new client,” Sheyenne said, “if you want to meet her.”
We run a tight office and know each other’s cases, even when my detective work and Robin’s legal work don’t overlap. I knocked politely before opening her office door; inside, she sat at her desk, facing the new client. Robin’s a beautiful young African-American woman from an upper middle-class family. She went to college, got her law degree, but instead of choosing to work for some wealthy corporation, she wanted to help the downtrodden, and there were very few who were more downtrodden than the unnaturals after the turmoil of the Big Uneasy. Here in the Quarter, it seemed that something truly unusual came up every day.
Such as the client sitting across from her right now.
I had never seen a Medusa with flowers in her hair before. The gorgon sat in a chair wearing a hippie peasant dress covered with frilly appliques. She smelled of patchouli mixed with dry reptile. Her hair, which was a nest of serpents, swirled and writhed. I cringed, knowing that Medusas have a penchant for turning people to stone much like their unrelated but just as petrifying counterparts, cockatrices and basilisks.
This Medusa, though, was an obvious peacenik, with a peace symbol pendant hanging down from her scabrous neck. Each one of the serpents was blindfolded with a little yellow ribbon tied around its head. The fanged mouths each bit down over a rosebud, neutralizing the fangs.
I smiled and stepped in. Did I mention that we see these sort of cases every day?
“Hello, Dan!” Robin sat forward in her chair, looking thoroughly un-petrified. On the desk sat a yellow legal pad and an animated pencil that was automatically scribbling notes. The pad and pencil set had been a gift last Christmas, when we’d helped the actual Santa Claus recover his stolen Naughty-and-Nice list. “Meet Saffron, my new client.”
The gorgon turned to me, and all of the blindfolded and flower-filled snakes also swiveled in my direction, as if looking for a target. When Saffron smiled, she showed multiple fangs. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Chambeaux.”
I had taken off my Fedora and hung up my sport jacket, and I was ready to help. “Need any zombie detective work?”
“Ms. Saffron is seeking legal advice on some rather pressing but esoteric issues,” Robin explained.
The Medusa sounded sweet and somewhat vapid. “What do you think, Mr. Chambeaux? Wouldn’t you like world peace, an end to conflict and strife, no more hunger or disease, every single person living a happy life, no more prejudice?”
“I suppose that would be nice.” I didn’t think she was actually looking for an insightful answer. “Sounds like a pretty long Christmas list.”
“All good citizens should wish for those things, and if we pull together, if every one of us helped the poor and the needy, if we just stopped hating one another, the world would be a better place.”
“I can’t argue with that. But, uh, was there a legal question involved?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Robin said.
Saffron put her elbows on Robin’s desk, and her snakes drifted around as if they were all stoned. “Now, I know that stealing is wrong, but what if you steal with the best of intentions?”
Robin frowned. “The law is the law. You can’t just steal things.”
“But what if a l
oved one was dying of a disease and some evil corporation was keeping the cure locked away? Wouldn’t I be justified in stealing it, not just for my loved one but for curing the world?”
“I doubt any jury would convict you,” Robin said, “but it’s still against the law to steal private property.”
“And what if a large army had the actual secret to ending wars forever so that no one else has to die in combat, but they keep it locked up because war is big business? Wouldn’t I be justified in stealing that secret, giving it to the world, and bringing peace?”
“Your justifications sound convincing,” Robin repeated, “but you might still go to jail.”
“You don’t mess with big business or the military industrial complex,” I warned.
When the Medusa sighed, all of her snakes went limp with disappointment. “At least I’d go to prison with a clean conscience.” Saffron still wasn’t ready to let the problem go, though. “But what if—”
I backed out of the office, knowing that she might ask the perennial question about dancing angels and pinheads. “This one’s above my pay grade, but Robin can solve it if anyone can.”
I was glad I only had to find a lost turkey.
At the UQPD precinct station, I met Officer Toby McGoohan adjusting his cap as he was leaving the station to go on his afternoon rounds. He stopped and saw me, and a grin broadened on his freckled face. “Hey, Shamble. Maybe you can help me with a question.”
I knew I was in for trouble. “What, McGoo?”
“If the Zombie Apocalypse happens in Vegas, would it stay in Vegas?”
Yeah, I’d shambled right into that one. McGoo is my BHF, my Best Human Friend. Through bad life choices and just plain dogged persistence, we had both reached for big dreams and successful careers—and we both ended up here, just trying to get by. He’d been on the beat for years; we helped each other on cases; we had always hung out together when I was a living human detective, and we still hung out even after I’d been murdered. It took him awhile to get used to his undead pal, but friendships last longer than rigor mortis.
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