Blanche and Ozwald were loafing around the house in utter boredom, no one could find the wine, or the remote, and the toaster was broken. Ozwald was desperately wanting to toast something. Blanche assumed bread, when in actuality he wanted to toast another one of her hand carved wooden tin soldiers, brought back from India by her cousin Pearl. A midget Indian with two prosthetic arms carved them. She had grown suspicious of why the twelve-piece set had been slowly vanishing over the past several days.
Blanche had been looking through the news paper at the obituaries to see if any of her old friends had passed away while she was gone on her adventure. She ran across an add for a private investigator. A poor family was looking to hire a detective to find the assassin of their father and husband, who was the trolley conductor on 7thstreet. This criminal was also thought to be responsible for the burglarizing of a chain of paint stores down town. Now blanche, having taken a class on private eye work about 37 years back, was just the woman for the job.
“Ozwald!”she said, startling him from his mischievous activity, and causing him to fumble a half scorched tin soldier and quickly hide it behind his back.
. “Why are you grinning? Anyway I’ve got a job for us to do. We are going to take this case, and help this poor family out. What are you doing over there, and why is the toaster on? Quick go wake Rip Van Winkle, he can come along. Ozwald slowly stepped down from the stool, hands still behind his back, and with his back hugging the wall casually made his way to Rip’s room, inconspicuously tossing the burnt antique into a corner on his way.
“Rip! Wake up! We are going to solve a case.” Ozwald banged on his door. Rip jumped up and tripped on a roller skate that was left out, and went careening into the dresser with a thud.
“What is he doing in there?” “I don’t know.” He ran out trying to hold up his pants while tightening his belt.
“ The wheel of cheese was not mine!!” yelled Rip, then coming to he said, “Ok, wha… what, I’m up, I’m up.”
Blanche picked up the phone and made the call to the family telling them they would take the case.
The three made their way outside and caught a taxi to the house of the family for questioning. Upon arrival they were warmly welcomed and treated to a hospitable lunch of asparagus and grilled cactus with vegemite.
It turns out, Dan, who was the husband recently killed, went to work driving the trolley as usual like he did every day. From what the police gathered, the burglar had tried to board the trolley carrying several cans of recently stolen paint. Dan, being a just man, and seeing that the criminal had just fled the store, tried to stop him by not letting him on the train. The paint thief started waving a gun at him telling him to drive and it went off and shot Dan the trolley driver.
The criminal fled the scene and no one got a good look at him except for a small blind boy, well known for making up stories. So they decided to go on the trail of the criminal and thought a good place to start would be the outskirts of the city, in the wilderness. (criminals always flee into the wilderness).
One morning when the three woke, and began to walk along the road, out in the field there was a llama. And then there wasn’t. They continued walking hoping someone would drive past; see them and they could hitch a ride.
Finally after passing a few road lizards, several cow pies, the carcass of a coyote and some wreckage from an unknown spacecraft, which they let be, (Blanche thought it not a good idea to get involved with an alien cover up) a rusty orange flatbed pickup truck passed, carrying some sheep and a pile of hay.
It stopped and the driver yelled, “Come on hop in! Where ya’ headed?” They gratefully climbed in with the kind farmer. He had hair almost as orange as his truck, a woven straw hat, only a few teeth and a green flannel shirt. They told him of their adventures and how they were trying to solve a murder. He asked “what brings you way out here to Beckerville?” Neither Blanche, Rip nor Oswald, after thinking about it, quite knew why. They were just here. They had been wandering for days.
“Well how bouts’ I take you folks back to my place? And we can figure things out from there. My wife makes a mean sweet potato pie.”
Ozwald was ecstatic. “Yah that sounds great!”Blanche said. What is your name anyway?” “Name’s Dolf. Dolf Jirgin”
“well Dolf, I am Blanche and these are my friends, Ozwald the monkey back there picking the sheeps nose, and Rip.” As she looked out the window at passing sage Blanche asked, “So Dolf have you lived in, what do you call this… Beckerville? All your life?” There was no reply, and the truck started to veer off the road. She turned and Dolf had fallen asleep hunched over the wheel snoring away.
The truck went tearing through the sagebrush bumping up and down over rocks. It was headed right for a cliff! Blanche grabbed the steering wheel and turned the truck back toward the road while Rip shook Dolf trying to wake him. He jolted awake and they all brought the truck to a stop.
Rip declared that he had to go see a man about a horse as he nearly had an accident in anticipation of an accident. “What was that all about Dolf? You fell asleep.”
“Oh did I? Oh craminy! If the Mrs. Finds out she’ll have my hide. See she don’t like me drivin’ on account a’ I fall asleep sometimes and scares folks.”
“Well you sure scared us.” Ozwald was swinging on the open door waiting for Rip, and just as Rip was finishing up his business behind a bush, Dolf went out again and with his foot on the gas, the truck took off down the road at full speed. Blanche grabbed Ozwald who was clinging for life to the open door and pulled him in. Leaving Rip standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Luckily they got close to the town and Blanche who was steering the truck was able to kill the engine so it coasted to a stop in front of a house. Across the street, a little old Irish woman came running out of an old farmhouse, flailing her arms and shaking a broom and shouting. She had to be about 4 foot 9 but stubborn as spit.
“Dolf! Dang your hide! You went off drivin’ again while I was out.” She saw the two passengers as she came up to the window. “Oh well excuse me, hello dears, I didn’t know he had company with him.”
“Luckily! Or he’d have gone over a cliff.” Blanche said.
“I’m Barbara, Dolf’s wife. Are you his mother?”
“Wha… No! I’m not.”
“Oh, you look old enough to be his mother. I just never met his mother. He never bothered to bring her over, and I just thought that you might be his mother.”
Blanche made no reply out of resentment. Wandering back into the farmhouse and motioning for them to follow her she mumbled to herself, half out loud for all who cared to hear,
“well goodness knows what goes through his mind…after 40 years of marriage you’d think a man would introduce you to his own mother. How I’ll ever survive such a man… Heaven knows.”
She brought them in, sat them down and made them some herbal tea. “How did you people run into Dolf? Where is he anyway?”
“You left him in the truck” Said Blanche.
“Oh, yes well, I’ll get him later, he’ll be fine.” Blanche thought “I’m not so worried about him, it’s everyone else in a five mile radius I worry about, with him behind a wheel.”
“So Dolf, bless his heart, as you may have gathered, is a narcoleptic. He falls asleep randomly and anywhere. Driving, eating, using his table saw…”
“You let him use a table saw?!” Blanche exclaimed.
“Have some blueberries dearie” said Barbara.
“Um we’d love to stay and get to know you but um, we are trying to solve a murder.”
“Goodness gracious! A murder? A whodunit. How exciting. I love mysteries.”
“Someone from the city, you may have seen it in the paper.”
“That Cab driver?” Said Barbara.
“Trolley but yes. Do you know anything?”
“I wish I could help Ma’am but aint nobody in this crazy township gonna be of any help.”
“Crazy? What do you mean crazy?”
“Everyone here has something mentally or physically wrong with them, or both. It’s sort of a reject town all the outcasts founded cause no where else would take em’”
“Really? Like what?” asked Ozwald.
“Well the nice China man next door, all four of his sons are severely scatterbrained, with an attention span of about 23 seconds. Martha across the street talks to water, lakes glasses, horse troughs, anything. Bill, four houses down on the right rhymes everything he says.”
“Wow, crazy!” Said Blanche.
“Your monkey would fit in just fine here.”
Blanche looked over to find Ozwald had wrapped himself in a hand sewn eastern run and was attempting to roll himself down a flight of stairs.
“Ozzy! Get out of that rug right now! And get over here. And what about you? What is wrong with you Barbara?” Blanche said.
“I married Dolf. You know, those Chinese sons I told you about, they might be perfect to help you on your quest. They are excellent at sneaking around stealthily and take orders well. They also know martial arts.”
“Hmmm I don’t know. I guess if they were caught they couldn’t give us away because they couldn’t remember huh?”
Meanwhile Rip was still standing on the side of the road in the middle of the dessert.
So Blanche and Ozwald went next door to Mr. Ping and explained their situation to him. He was very warm and friendly to them and emphatically supported the idea of having his four ninja sons accompany her on her journey, as they were doing him no good there.
Mr. Ping was in the paint business once, but was cheated out of his company by his selfish backstabbing partner. He warned them that he suspected him as the killer of the Trolley driver.
So off the six of them went passing Dolf still asleep in the truck.
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