By Emie M. Little

Lazy, swinging jazz filtered in my window from the music school on the floor below my office. I swirled my glass, listening to how the clinking ice joined the quick staccato melody from the saxes and the rain outside. Every once in a while, a rumble of thunder or bright flash of lightning added some excitement to my personal concert.

With any luck, that would be the only excitement I would have today.

No one had come to hire me in weeks. The door had enough dust in front of it to kill an asthmatic, disturbed only by my footprints between the door and my desk. And that was just the way I liked it. I wasn’t interested in taking in any cases. I hadn’t had the heart to investigate in… months really. Not since the incident.

In response to the memory, the sound of my stomach grumbling accompanied the night’s concert. My stomach was reminding me that ever since that night, I had been no more eager to cook than I had been to take cases. It had been subsiding on a diet of cold cuts, granola, and bourbon, and it wasn’t happy about it.

I scowled at the memory and the hunger and took a deep drink to try and forget both. It didn’t help. I’d gotten into the detective business ’cause Ma had always said I had a mind like a steel trap. Problem was, I didn’t know how to release that trap.

Thunder rumbled again, accompanied by a flash of lightning that split the sky and revealed a figure in my doorway. I glared at the creaky door hinges, which had betrayed me when they were covered by the thunder.

The man strode to my desk with the focus and determination of an ant who’d spotted a picnic. He didn’t seem to notice the room’s disarray as he strode purposefully toward me. My office only had one lamp, but the occasional flash of lightning painted a clear enough picture of this stranger. He was tall and thin, like a scarecrow, but judging by his professor’s jacket, glasses, and college pin, this scarecrow had a brain.

“I need you to find someone,” he said without preamble. His voice matched his look to an almost comedic degree, slightly high and nasally. It likely grated on the students he taught like parmesan on pasta.

“I don’t do missing persons cases anymore,” I replied, not moving.

“It’s for my fiancée.”

It took nearly all of my self-control not to glance toward the face-down picture frame on my desk. “I especially don’t do those types of missing persons cases.” I took a dredge of my drink. “Haven’t had much luck with them lately.”

“No, it’s—my fiancée isn’t the one who’s missing.” He was sweating like a baker whose souffle wouldn’t rise. “She’s with her parents. The person I need you to find is the no-good, rotten sod who almost convinced her to leave me. My Clarisse is a good girl, loyal and honest. But then this rat comes in, and suddenly she’s fiddling with her ring!”

I realized something important then: just ’cause this scarecrow had a brain didn’t mean he had common sense. “Doesn’t sound like a case to me. No one can give your girl second thoughts she doesn’t already have. Sounds like you two just need a talk. Now, you’re in luck, I’ll offer you a twenty-five percent discount off my normal hourly rate for that bit of advice.”

“No, I’m telling you this isn’t her! It’s him.”

I was ready to take away my discount offer, but then he said a name. No, he said the name. Suddenly, no amount of self-control in the world could have kept my eyes from the down-facing frame. Scarecrow here used the very name of a conman I had been chasing since the incident. He was the incident.

From what I remembered—and Ma was still right about my memory—the con man in question was extremely attractive, objectively speaking, with plenty of charm to match. His left eye was covered in a milky film that made it clear that it was blind. And that one blind eye made it very easy for him to conveniently miss wedding and engagement rings. He commonly targeted young women in relationships, pulled them away, and swindled the money from canceled weddings or pawned rings to put into his own pockets.

I was familiar with his methods, because I’d been a victim of them myself. The man had targeted my fiancée. Afterward, she’d disappeared faster than a turkey in November. I don’t know if it was out of shame, or if it had brought real doubts to the surface. I haven’t managed to find her to ask. I would have been married a long time ago if it hadn’t been for him, but now I was as alone as the egg left in the carton after an eleven-egg omelet.

“Say that name again,” I ordered. He jumped like a burnt bagel popping out of the toaster.

“Do… Do you know him?”

I gripped my lamp, casting its light onto the opposite wall, which was covered in notes, newspaper clippings, and photos.

The man pointed. “That’s him!”

“I’ve been tracking him for months,” I growled. “I have been trying to figure out where he came from, where he goes after his cons. I thought the trail had run cold.” My eyes traced the board, and I slowly righted the frame on my desk. From the frame, Vanessa stood clutching the first lasagna we’d made together. “I’ll take the case. Tell me everything you know. I will find him.”

I stood and made my way to the board, sneering at the face of the man in the photo at the center. Not for the first time, I spoke to his image. “I’ll find you. I’ll find out where you went after you tore out my heart. I’ll find out where you came from, Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emie M. Little is an Accountant in Virginia who has had a love of storytelling from childhood, stemming from a love of reading. Ever since middle school she had been posting fanfictions across several websites. Now, over a decade later she has started to delve into the world of original works and short stories. She has enjoyed writing for Havok and getting a chance to publish original works.

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