The office was filled with a rather thick smoke when I got back from eating my regular Hoagie. It wasn’t thick enough to make you feel like you’re dying, but it was so thick that I had a hard time seeing my own hand in front of my face. Jeez, Cynthia must’ve forgotten our little rule about smoking with the windows closed again. I fumbled to my right to find the switch and cursed under my breath when only one of the overhead lights turned on. Why is it that light bulbs always burn out so fast? I looked around for Cynthia to ask her how many cigarettes she smoked in ten minutes when I noticed a flickering light from the corner of my desk. Cautiously, I made my way over and almost screamed when I realized that it wasn’t any cigarette smoke, but an actual fire. S***. I panicked and started stamping at the flames with my old Brogues. Brogues don’t stop fires on their own and I could feel my leg hair being singed off within an inch of my life. “Detective Dupin? You have a client meeting. I’ll send him in now.” I panicked again and drug the trash can under my desk to keep trying to beat the flames out as an older gentleman walked in. He fiddled with his hat nervously and waited till I motioned for him to sit before he moved.
I bit my cheek to keep from screeching from pain and grunted out “What can I help you with sir?”
He hesitated and I could’ve punched him I was so agitated. The flames were dying down, but it felt like my shoes had been melted on my foot. “Well, you see, it’s not for me per say. I’m looking for my daughter.” He paused and dug through his wallet for a roughly bent photo of a rather pretty girl, “Her name is Imogen and she left home after having an argument with her mother. I sent her money a few times and the last known address I have of hers is this-” He motioned towards another piece of paper, “We just want her home. My wife and I think-”
I gritted my teeth, “Mister, I would be glad to take your case. Please go talk to Cynthia out front and she’ll be able to help you with any questions.”
“Arthur. Arthur Lee is my name. Please just find my little girl.” I nodded frantically and grimaced more than smiled. Thankfully though that seemed to be enough to assure him that I, the man with his foot in a burning trashcan, was the best man for the job. As soon as the door shut behind him, I let out a silent gasp of pain and dug my leg out from ash to find my calf a delicate porky pink. I hobbled out of my office with the photo and the address shoved in one pocket and a coat around my shoulders. Cynthia snickered at my walk and lit up another cigarette. I climbed into my car and cursed myself for being so stupid as to take the case without even looking through the information Mr. Lee had given me. The scrap of paper with the address on it seemed like it was one wrong move away from being torn in two. He must’ve tried to go and find Imogen himself. Poor guy. I tisked and started the day and a half drive from rainy Washington to sweltering Nevada. Honestly, long drives tend to drive people a little crazy especially when they’re taken alone. At least with someone else riding along you have someone to chit chat with even if the other person is the dullest person you can imagine. I’m talking about people that just sit and watch paint dry or a washing machine wash clothes for fun. About two hours into the first day I had taken to talking to myself I’m positive that the other patrons in the truck stop thought I was insane when I was mumbling to myself about the coffee.
The Tonopah Motel was the single most rundown motel I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to stay at. Just in the lobby I could see the tiles threatening to pop off and could smell what I could assume was a dead animal within about 500 feet of me. “How long are you going to stay for?” A gruff voice broke me from my disgust and I turned to see a leathery man huffing away at a pipe.
I shrugged and tried to seem casual, “I’m trying to find a friend of mine and I think she stayed here. Is there any way I could see your guest log just to make sure I’ve got the right hotel?” He looked around and rubbed his fingers together to signify that I wasn’t getting anything for free. From the sound of his fingers it sounded like another fire could start anytime. I slid a $10 across the desk and in return he slid the guest book to me. Thumbing through till I found her name, I slid my fingers across the worn pages to see that she had checked out over a week ago. “Any idea where she went?” I asked while sliding the book back. The man, Al as his nametag read, made a motion with his fingers again and I slid him another $5 with a sigh.
“Pretty girl she was.” Al looked at his crusty fingernails and rubbed them across his shirt, “Said she got a calling and had to go to Kansas. Oakley, Oakdale, something like that. She was mumbling something under her breath when she left. Couldn’t tell you what it was though.” He shot me a yellow smile and added “Pleasure doing business with you.”
I shuddered when I walked out and made a mental note to take a shower in bleach the following day when I got in Kansas. As I drove, I couldn’t help but wonder about what Imogen could’ve been mumbling about. Did she get into some trouble with a boy or maybe whatever gangs populate Nevada? Did she have a breakdown of some kind? Why was she mumbling to herself? I mean, surely it’ll be fine and I can help her fix whatever trouble she was in. I hope.
Knights Inn Oakley in Oakley, Kansas was almost as bad as the Tonopah Motel had been, but at least I wasn’t slapped with Eau du Parfum Death as soon as I walked in. The woman working there, Bonnie, was much more polite than Al had been and managed a strangled smile when I walked up to the front desk. “Hello, Ma’am. My name is Louie and I have a friend that stayed around here I think. Her name is Imogen and this is what she looks like-” I dug the photo of her out of my pocket and slid it towards her. “I got lost a couple towns back and stayed in a different town till she called me.”
Bonnie nodded somberly and jabbed a chubby finger at the photo, “I remember her. She was suppose to check out today, but she didn’t come back from a walk I think.” She looked up at me and said “I told her that she shouldn’t go out for a walk so late. Never know what men are capable of.”
I shot her a nervous smile and asked “Is there any way I could maybe just stay in her room and wait for her to come back? I can pay however much I need to.”
Bonnie stopped and looked around in that clueless innocent way people from small towns tend to do. She nodded eventually and mumbled “$55 dollars for three days. If she’s not back by then I’ll call the sheriff.”
“No need.” I shook my head too quickly and leaned in to whisper “She sometimes just disappears for a while. She’ll come back soon enough.” Bonnie nodded slowly and handed off the key to me. Before I left, I turned and asked “Was Imogen mumbling something?”
She nodded again, “She freaked out the cleaning lady with what she did to her room. You’ll see soon enough…” What the hell does that mean? I shrugged and walked into room 405 and almost had a heart attack at what I saw. She had scrawled the words ‘What creature walks on all fours in the morning, two legs after noon, and with three legs in the evening?’ in what I couldn’t quite tell if it was blood or just red lipstick. She had two notebooks open on the side table. One had draws of circles after circles and the other looked like she had drawn a cooked egg. What the hell is going on with this girl? I sat down on the bed and flipped through the notebooks hoping to find another clue before I opened one of the drawers to find another message written in red across the wood. ‘They don’t like noise. They let me go once and I’m going back.’ Oh my god, it was worse than I thought. She had managed to get herself into mob culture and she was probably dating some sap named Tommy who got himself killed and she saw and fell in love with the leader and now she’ll have to go into the witness protection program and- I sighed and laid back onto the bed. My stomach grumbled loudly to interrupt my train of thought and I couldn’t believe how stupid I was. I had pulled an all-nighter to make it to Kansas as fast as I could and the last thing I had to eat was a sad pack of powdered mini donuts at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. I could really be an idiot when I thought I was on a roll and now I had no idea what I was suppose to do. Do I just risk waiting for this girl to come back or do I try to find Tommy’s body and the rest of the gang? My stomach growled again much louder this time like a sad whale and I couldn’t think anymore on an empty stomach. I grabbed the two notebooks and whatever spare paper I could find to try and crack this secret circle code. Oakley, Kansas was relatively small with only about 2,000 citizens so it wasn’t hard to find my way to a local diner on foot. Buckhorn Family Restaurant was filled with jolly locals until I walked in. I’d like to put the blame on my rugged good looks, but it had probably been a century since someone new had dared to step foot in the town. I ordered myself pancakes, bacon, and a side of eggs before burying myself in the notebooks to ignore the stares of the locals. I still just couldn’t figure out what the circles meant? I checked a map on my phone and it couldn’t be a geographical code to tell where Tommy’s body was because none of them touched. They each had a little design in the middle that was different. Maybe it’s a tattoo design or maybe some fancy new art style that no one knows what the hell it is? I sighed and halfheartedly pushed my notes away when Kelly came over with my plates of food. As she leaned down, I could tell that she was trying to figure out what I was doing here.
I took a chance and asked “Any idea what it means? I had a friend come through here and this is all she left behind. Is it an art style or something or?”
She grinned devilishly and sat across from me. She snatched a piece of bacon, “If I tell you then you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone else, okay?” I nodded and she beckoned me closer to say “It all started in the fifties. There was a very pretty girl called Emmy that was out in the fields one day with her little sister picking flowers. All of the sudden, they both saw this thing that looked like a falling star. Immy told her little sister, Patty, to run for it and she did. Patty hid in the old house that was only maybe 500 or 600 feet from the field and watched her sister from there. Emmy stayed closer and waited till the thing landed before looking around at it. This thing was bigger than a house and a beautiful gold color, so she knew it wasn’t a star, but she didn’t know what it was. This door opens and out walks a boy about Emmy’s age. They start talking and because Emmy was such a beautiful girl, the boy started to like her. He invited her onto the ship and that was the last Emmy was ever seen. When the thing took off again it left one of those.” She pointed to one of the circles and munched on another piece of bacon.
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me that this girl was taken by-” I leaned in, “aliens?” I let out a guffaw and tried to cover it up as a cough. “Sorry, but this isn’t the X-Files.”
Kelly huffed and puffed her chest out when I laughed. “It’s a true story though. Patty was my grandma and she swore that that’s what happened to her sister.” She stood up, “Believe it or not if you want, but I have to get back to work.”
I grabbed her arm and she turned back to look at me. “Thank you for your help.” Kelly gave me a stiff nod and went back to her work with a fake smile. Are aliens even real? Why would they abduct a perfectly normal girl? I almost choked on my coffee and threw down a $10. It all makes sense! ‘They let me go once and I’m going back’ that’s why there wasn’t just one mark. How the hell am I this dumb? I ran back to the motel and read through the messages one last time. Jeez, I’m an idiot. What did the message on the wall mean then? It wasn’t like the others in the sense that there was a logical answer to them. Just what the hell did it mean? Time to get abducted by aliens.
I happened to find myself in the middle of an abandoned field with weeds brushing against my ankles. I also happened to bring heavy frying pans in each hand and started to bang them together. “It would be such a shame if I were to get abducted right now!” I screamed as I marched in a circle with the pans banging loudly. A golden colored thing started to fall from the sky and I had accomplished my goal. Oh god, I just called aliens to Earth oh my god. I dropped the pans and started to run when it was close enough to block out the moon. A whooshing behind me warned me that they were following me. In the span of about five minutes I had managed to have a close encounter of the third kind and I didn’t want to have a fourth kind. Was there a fourth kind? Was it a butt thing? The thing slammed into the ground in front of me and the door opened to welcome me in the aura of light and probable death. S***. I can’t just go now. They know about me. Sighing, I slowly walked up the sloped ramp and looked around. This place is sleek with ice white furniture and all the computer screens you could want and- oh no. An alien was staring me dead in the face and the only thing I could focus on was it’s wriggling, violet colored tentacles sprouting from the sides of it’s lips. I could throw up looking at this thing, god. It buzzed and hissed at me and motioned with slimy, worm-like arm to another more regal looking alien. He, I’m assuming it was a he, was bald with skin the color of a vintage red wine. His eyes were like two thickly lined slits and where his lips would be curled back into a mock-smile.
“Hello, human. I am an acting translator for the ones on board the ship. You have the answer, do you not?” He motioned to a chair to tell me to sit down.
I looked around nervously, “Of course I do. Please, ask away.”
He hissed and clicked out my answer to the other alien who aggressively chirped an answer back. “They wish to know the answer to the riddle. What creature walks on all fours in the morning, two legs after noon, and with three legs in the evening?”
Oh Jesus, that’s what the riddle was for. It was the answer to get you on the ship safely. I licked my lips and thought through the short list of things with two legs that could be four or three when the answer hit me. The Tentacle Alien slimed towards me and I shouted “Man! It’s man!”
Wine Alien stepped between us and translated for him. The Tentacle Alien seemed to frown and had the Wine Alien asked “Is there anything you desire from us?”
I nodded and said confidently “Take me to your daddy.” S***. These aliens are going to take me out back and take me out for that.
The Wine Alien translated and said back “We will take you to the one called ‘Daddy’.”
I hopped up from my seat, “Who calls him Daddy?”
The Wine Alien leaned in and whispered “The girl. Imogen. She is the one who calls him Daddy.” Oh god, I didn’t need to know that about this poor girl. They lead me back towards one of the closed doors and typed in a passcode with his arm. The door opened to reveal Imogen and this alien in a rather compromising position with only a thin sheet and sheer will power keeping us from seeing them.
She let out a screech and the three of us ran out and pressed ourselves against a close wall. The alien stormed out and closed the door before seemingly shedding his skin and changing into a larger and even more unattractive version of the Tentacle Alien. Imagine more slime and tentacles sprouting from all over his face. He hissed an order to the two aliens and they both ran away towards the computer room. He leaned down till his tentacles slimed against my cheeks and growled out “Who do you think you are to steal your way onto my ship and interrupt my time with my girl.”
I held my hands up and pressed further against the wall. “I just need to talk to her for a few minutes. I was hired by her dad to find her and I just need to tell her that her parents miss her.” He laughed and slid away from me to look down at me. “C’mon, if you’re not scared that she wants to leave then why keep her hidden?” Is this what you do with aliens? Try to be c***y and BS your way into something?
It seemed to work because he seethed out “I will make you a deal with you then, idiot human. I will ask you one riddle and you must answer it right to talk to her. If you get it wrong then you will become a part of a feast for our more carnivorous brothers from another planet.” His eyes twinkled with determination to win when I nodded. “Many have heard me, but no one has seen me, I will not speak back until spoken to. What am I?”
Getting abducted seemed like nothing compared to this. He slimed towards me and I said whatever I could think of “Echo. It’s an echo.” He let out a series of clicks which I assume to be curses and went towards the front of the ship to yell at the two aliens that had let me on. Things to remember for future reference: aliens don’t back out on promises. I cautiously made my way back to the room and knocked before I opened the door. Imogen glared at me and I raised my hands in defense, “I just want to talk. My name is Louie Dupin and I’m a detective. Your father hired me because he and you mother miss you very much and want you to just come back home.”
She scoffed “You’re lying to me. August warned me that people would try to break us up. I’ll live with him forever if I stay with him here.” Imogen motioned around with a hand.
My god, I could’ve slapped her. There’s no way in hell I traveled over 20 hours cramped in a car with a hunk of sausage meat for a leg. Thing to pull out the big guns. “No, no. He’s the one lying to you. Ask him about a girl named Emmy. She’s one of the first ones he took if you don’t believe me.” I stood up and turned to go, “If your parents didn’t love you and I knew you were such a brat then I wouldn’t have taken the case.” She threw a pillow at me when I walked out. I said my goodbyes to the Tentacle Alien and the Wine Alien and made a grimace towards ‘August’. He grinned smugly and waved to me from his human suit in the ship. I packed my things up the next day and drove back to the office. Damn, my leg still hurt. Three weeks later, I got a letter from the Lee family with a photo. I read the letter first (very sweet with a touching story of love now that they had their daughter back). Wait, daughter back? I looked at the photo and smiled when I noticed the third person. The P.S. written in messy scrawl read: You owe me a date, Mr. Detective. With a kiss in red lipstick below it.