The Butler Defective Read online

  THE BUTLER DEFECTIVE

  A Nigel Comedic Mystery, Book Two

  D. R. Lowrey

  Late Bloomer Books

  The Butler Defective

  Copyright © 2020 by D. R. Lowrey, Late Bloomer Books

  For more about this author please visit D. R. Lowrey

  All characters and events in this eBook, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, then please return to amazon.com and purchase an additional copy.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Editing by The Pro Book Editor

  Cover Design by Gareth Southwell

  Art Deco elements provided by Brusheezy.com

  Rum Raisin font by Astigmatic, Smythe font by Vernon Adams

  Thanks to Peter Anthony for beta read and feedback

  Main category—Fiction

  Other category—Humorous/General

  First Edition

  CONTENTS

  New Butler, New Body

  One More Thing, or Two

  A Feral Butler’s Day Off

  Unwelcome Guests

  A Guest’s Welcome

  Reintroductions

  A Frog in the Works

  Inquiring Minds

  Getting Implicated

  A Shocking Dinner Party

  Baseless Accusations

  A Man Who’s Figured Things Out

  Butler’s Business

  Evidence Piles Up

  Treasure of the L3 Vertebrae

  Too Many Psssssts

  Sleepless Night, Fitful Morning

  A Heart-to-Heart

  Explosive Preparations

  Last-Minute Superheroes

  Thinking Out of the Box

  With this Ring

  Wedding Splasher

  Fit for a Funeral

  Butler or Not, Here We Bury

  Old Friends, Dead Friends

  Funeral, Interrupted

  Nigel Makes His Move

  Grumps Gets His Chance

  A Penny Drops on Stanley

  Pennies from Heaven

  A Cat Out of the Bag

  Leopards Have Limitations

  Nigel Changes His Spots

  Aftermath

  CHAPTER ONE

  New Butler, New Body

  “Reporting for duty,” said Nigel while standing at attention in his stiff new butler suit and snapping a crisp salute. “Nigel Blandwater-Cummings at your service.”

  A new career has but one first day, and Nigel wanted his to go down smoothly.

  “Bring me a tequila,” replied his new boss, hunched over her desk, projecting the topside of her cap to the attentive Nigel.

  Mrs. Sandoval’s mornings, Nigel would learn, never went down smoothly. Nevertheless, he pushed up his right eyebrow to its fullest extent and pursed his lips. He’d long rehearsed this expression—the Haughty Butler, he called it—in front of the bathroom mirror. It was during one such session that the notion of butlering first loitered in that warehouse between his ears.

  “Forgive me, madam, for being presumptuous, but was it not my understanding that you had sworn off alcohol before noon?”

  “Not today. I’m feeling unnerved.” Her morning constitutional appeared to have taken a toll. The sunlight perhaps had been too dazzling, the birds’ songs too energetic, or the flowers too smelly.

  “Oh, dear, sorry to hear that.” Indeed he was. An unhappy employer is a demanding employer.

  “Cut the sympathy,” said Mrs. Sandoval, cradling her forehead. “Sorries don’t soothe the bulldog. Pour me a strong one.” Then, after groaning like a ship hung on the rocks, she added, “And tend to that body in the garden.”

  The previous statement required clarification. The tequila bit was well understood, but that part about the body… Surely, foreign objects on the grounds fell under the remit of the gardener. He asked, “Pardon me. Did you say ‘that body in the garden’?”

  Mrs. Sandoval uncoiled herself into an extreme recline, affording Nigel unobstructed sightlines into her nostrils. Looking down her nose at him, she continued, “Before I said ‘that body in the garden,’ I said ‘bring me a tequila.’ If you’re going to work here, you need to keep things straight.”

  “Yes, madam. I’ll fetch the tequila.”

  Nigel returned brandishing a silver tray topped with the crucial tequila shot, which he’d diluted slightly with water. Mrs. Sandoval had proudly declared her temperance between the hours of midnight and noon, so if she found it hard to live up to that promise, he felt obliged to aid her just a little.

  “Your tequila, madam.”

  In a well-practiced sweeping motion, Mrs. Sandoval grabbed the slender shot glass from the serving tray, lifted it to her lips, and flipped it bottoms up. The golden elixir leaped toward its destiny, hopping off the tongue, skipping down the esophagus, and jumping into the stomach where it cleaved into a thousand tiny court jesters ready to distract the agitated queen. She placed the glass back on the tray and expelled a toxic cloud of fumes over a rolled tongue.

  “Is that the Padron Golden?” she asked.

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Something’s wrong with it. Contaminated. Water’s gotten into the bottle. Fifteen percent, I’d say. Throw it out. Not worth drinking.”

  “Yes, madam.” Lesson learned.

  “Now, go take care of that body in the garden.”

  “If I may ask, madam, what kind of a body are you referring to?”

  “A dead one, I think. At least it didn’t move when I stumbled over its ankle this morning.”

  Maintaining one’s composure, Nigel had recently learned, was a vital attribute in the butler’s toolbox. But damn! A body? Projecting his best butlerly detachment, he asked, “Do we know who it is?”

  “Speaking for myself, no. If you do, let me know.”

  “Yes, madam,” replied Nigel, as per his training. “I will take care of the situation.”

  “One other thing, Nigel.”

  “Another thing?” said Nigel, hoping it might be another tequila rather than another body.

  “The dead man has a toad in his mouth.”

  “A toad in his mouth?” repeated Nigel.

  Nigel placed a hand to his chin and mouthed the words, “A toad in his mouth.” His eyes brightened. “Ah! You’re speaking metaphorically. You mean he has a frog in his throat. I see. I’ve never heard the phrase ‘a toad in his mouth,’ but it stands to reason. Perhaps he died of some respiratory ailment. But,” continued Nigel, “how did you know he had a frog in his throat?”

  “I did not say a frog in his throat. I said a toad in his mouth. Look in his mouth. You’ll see a toad. That’s what I call a toad in his mouth.”

  “I see. I’ll get on it straight away.”

  “Oh, Nigel.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “I’m glad you’re here today. It’s times like these when a butler comes in handy. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, madam,” said Nigel, exiting with a purposeful gait and stiff posture. Once out of Mrs. Sandoval’s eyeshot, the self-assured stride crumpled into a stumbling lurch.

  Nigel had hoped to slowly ease into his new job. A break-in period would have
been nice. This was not to say he lacked confidence. Confidence he had up to the gills after his intensive two-month course from Old Winpole’s Online College for Butlers. The old school provided a comprehensive, dual-tracked buttling programme covering all the technical aspects—beverage preparation, laying out of clothing, Excel—and the behavioral aspects—obsequious servitude, haughtiness, and sly browbeating—in equal measures. Still, if any single point had been chased up a tree at the old alma mater, it was to expect the unexpected.

  To demonstrate, Old Winpole related the story of his first job where, on his third day of employment, he’d learned of his client’s habit of allowing a leopard to range freely about the premises. Old Winpole had to buck up and show that cat who was boss. The unspoken lesson in the tale was that people who hire butlers are sometimes lunatics. But at least Old Winpole, referred to as Scar by his associates, had been allowed a couple days to establish his bearings.

  Nigel had been allowed scarcely a pair of minutes. On the bright side, the presence of an intact body indicated a scarcity of large cats roaming the estate.

  ****

  Nigel, standing, and the policeman, squatting, stared down upon the body. None of the three appeared comfortable in the presence of the others. Nigel broke the ice.

  “How long you suppose he’s been dead?” asked Nigel of the policeman.

  “Long enough,” the officer said, poking around the body with a pencil.

  “I would agree,” said Nigel, running short of clever repartee. “I guess you see a lot of dead bodies in your profession, eh?”

  “You talkin’ to me?” said the policeman.

  Nigel looked at the policeman and then at the dead man. “Yes.”

  “Nope,” said the policeman.

  Several seconds of silence followed.

  “My wife was a police officer,” said Nigel.

  “Please step off the body, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Step off the body, sir. Please try to keep off the body.”

  Nigel hadn’t noticed that he’d been standing on the dead man’s hand, now mashed into the soft garden soil. “Oh, sorry about that.”

  The police officer did not acknowledge his apology, nor did the dead man. The officer continued to poke around the body—a pocket here, a nostril there. An ambulance stood nearby, staffed by a couple of EMTs enjoying a tranquil moment by analyzing each other’s high kicks.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Nigel.

  “Detective,” said the policeman, comparing his own shoe to that of the dead man’s.

  Before Nigel could think of what else to say, his attention was drawn to a man in a crumply trench coat loping toward the garden, trailed by a younger minion. Nigel wasn’t familiar with the trench coat, but he recognized the head poking from it. It was that rubber-faced cop the townsfolk referred to as Barney. Winjack was his actual name, and he had somehow—nepotism, possibly—been promoted from patrol officer to detective. Past dealings with this officer had left Nigel highly unimpressed. This hayseed seemed better suited as a jail-sweep than as a detective. He suspected the trench coat had been bought the day of his promotion and slept in every night since.

  The trench-coated Rubberface placed himself at the body’s edge and assumed a Superman posture with feet planted wide apart and fists set firmly against his waist. He looked toward the horizon as if he might spot a killer lurking in the woods. The policeman looked up at the detective as if he’d spotted a nitwit lurking in a trench coat.

  “What ya got here?” shouted Rubberface.

  “Dead man,” answered the officer.

  “I see that,” said the detective, rolling his eyes within their rubbery sockets. “Can you detect a cause? Any signs of a struggle? Foul play?”

  “There’s a toad in his mouth.”

  “A toad in his mouth? That could be your cause of death right there—poison toad. What’s that over there?” said Rubberface, pointing at a shovel.

  “Shovel,” said the cop.

  “I can see that. Why is it here? What was he doing with it?”

  “Digging that hole, maybe,” said the cop, nodding toward a freshly dug hole.

  “Maybe,” said the detective, “but that ain’t much of a hole. If he was digging, he must have been interrupted. Or maybe someone else was digging, and he interrupted them. Maybe he happened upon someone digging a hole for an unseemly purpose, a confrontation ensued, and this man ended up dead.”

  “With a toad in his mouth?” said Nigel.

  Rubberface slowly turned toward Nigel, appraising him with squinty eyes.

  “Don’t I know you?” he said.

  “Nigel. Nigel Blandwater-Cummings. I’m the butler here.”

  “The butler, eh?” His intonation implied he had heard about butlers. He rolled his eyes over Nigel from head to toe. “Your shoes match these tracks,” said the detective. “I would say a near-perfect match. You going to tell me that’s a coincidence?”

  “No.”

  “How do you explain your tracks being all around the body?” asked the detective, pointing at the footprints.

  “Must have happened when I was walking around the body.”

  Rubberface looked down at the body as if searching for another explanation. “Hold on a minute. Look at that there. His hand has been mashed into the dirt. That’s important. That’s desecration. We’ve got desecration of the body. A real sicko did this. Had you seen this before?” he asked the officer.

  “Maybe,” said the officer.

  “What do you mean ‘maybe’? Either the hand was desecrated or it wasn’t desecrated.”

  “Maybe. I don’t recall,” said the cop in a tone reserved for pesky little brothers. “It became hard to tell once that guy stepped on it.”

  “I see. The butler has already contaminated the evidence. We’ll treat this as a homicide scene until further notice.” Rubberface instructed his minion to take pictures of the body from various angles and collect the shovel as evidence.

  The detective probed various aspects of the body, including the toad, with a small metal wand. As the body was loaded, toad and all, into the ambulance, the detective wrote vigorously in his notepad as the officer waited patiently to secure the scene, and Nigel looked on in wonder.

  “Any theories, detective?” asked Nigel.

  “Given that he had a toad in his mouth, the best theory is death by toad. But I’ve lived in Tonkawa County all my life and never seen anyone put a toad in their mouth, so we’ve still got a mystery.”

  “May I posit a theory?”

  “So, the butler has a theory, does he? Everyone wants to be a detective. Go ahead. Amuse me. What is your theory?”

  “I apologize that my hypothesis is not so intriguing as yours, but, what if the man died of a natural cause? A heart attack, embolism, stroke, whatever, and he fell down dead with his mouth agape—”

  “A what?”

  “Agape.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Nigel dropped his jaw open which the detective seemed to take as a kind of insult. “Open. His mouth was open. Then, sometime later, a toad seeking accommodation for the night found comfortable lodging in the unfortunate man’s mouth.”

  The detective’s face roiled as if thoughts were squirming just below his gummy hide. “Not impossible,” he said. “But it still leaves many hanging questions. Why was the man here in the first place, and what was he doing? Also, what killed the toad?”

  “Heart attack, old age, bad breath, whatever. All good toads go to heaven someday.”

  “My advice to you: stick to butlering. Meanwhile, I’ll be identifying the victim. That may tell us why he was here. The coroner and the toxicologist should have a great deal to say about this case. By the way, you shouldn’t leave town without notifying the police.”

  “Notifying the police? Why would I need to—”

  “I’m just saying. Please, notify the police.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  One More Thing
, or Two

  As they carted the body off to wherever they cart bodies off to, Nigel observed Mrs. Sandoval watching from behind the porch railing. At various times during the proceedings, he had seen each of the home’s four female inhabitants in that same location. The rotation of observers reminded him of one of those Swiss mechanical clocks on which a figure of a mouse pops out of a tiny door, circles the stage, and exits in time for the next mouse’s entrance.

  Before the cop’s arrival, Nigel had been the observer on the porch as he watched the ladies view the body via a sort of corpse-viewing parade. First on the scene had been the estate’s primary decision-maker, Mrs. Sandoval. Mrs. Sandoval, a well-maintained, middle-aged woman with a penchant for costumery, normally maintained a professional business-like demeanor between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and noon. Beyond those hours, when conscious, she drifted in a tequila-soaked fog. Wearing an approximation of a nineteenth-century Italian sailor’s uniform, Mrs. Sandoval had stopped briefly in front of the body and said, “Don’t he look natural?” Perhaps this proclamation was standard protocol from a lifetime of funerals or, perhaps, toad-stuffed corpses were “natural” among the Sandovals. Either way, being a gracious woman, she would not have drawn attention to the warty amphibian bulging from the man’s mouth.

  Mrs. Sandoval had been followed in the procession by her daughter. Stefanie was adored by members of the household, though also pitied for having inherited a mutation for normalcy. Her surroundings rendered poor Stefanie almost unnoticeable in a Marilyn Munster sort of way. She had a husband who also went unnoticed because he was away a lot, though not enough for most people. Stefanie’s head had not swiveled as she approached the body, nor had her body twisted. The shifting pupils of her widening eyes had been the only body parts allowed to acknowledge the cadaver she’d come to see. That is, until her shoe had made contact with the body’s outstretched foot. Then she had expelled a mouse-sized shriek and scurried past like a chill running up the spine.

  Next in the procession had been the octogenarian, Abuelita, in her mechanized wheelchair. Not much to say about Abuelita unless you had a few weeks to kill. Life had been hard on her, and in return, she had been hard on life. Everyone else’s life. She had one eye that drifted aimlessly, as if searching for an exit. The other eye was steady, purposeful, and evil, with a tendency to sear any flesh, bone, or willpower unfortunate enough to fall within its gaze. Abuelita had stopped her chair in front of the body and sneered. Anything else would have been a surprise. Sneering was her go-to move. She might have been sneering at Death, that weak-kneed rival whom she bested on a regular basis. She might have been sneering at a corpse who had the audacity to die on her property without her participation. Or she might have been sneering because it was a Monday.