The Curious Misadventures of Tubby Wexler, Private Investigator

By Steven W. Johnson

Tubby Wexler believes he is the personification of the pulp magazine detectives of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. He has all the trappings, a rundown office in a dilapidated building, a faithful, if untrained, canine, a beautiful, voluptuous Cajun secretary, and a host of bizarre clients. The only thing Tubby doesn't have... is a clue!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven W. Johnson
• Release date: Jan 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301145973

Steven W. Johnson

I served 3 tours in Viet Nam. And my love of history, the English language, and voracious reading habits have enabled me to develop a voice that is descriptive without being overly verbose. I am currently Vice President of the Pahrump, NV Friends of the Library, a former president of the Oasis Writers Guild, Pahrump, NV and a member of the both the National and Southern Nevada Chapter of Sisters in Crime. I have edited and published a current events magazine before turning to writing full time.My first novel, Not Much of a Crime, was written in four months by not wasting my evenings watching summer reruns. While the story is fictious, there are many things that appear to be taken directly out of life here in Pahrump, NV. My other books include The Curious Misadventures of Tubby Wexler, Private Investigator, Need A Job? Publish A Book! with OpenOffice, and my latest compilation of short stories, Long Tales & Short Shorts.

Book preview

The Curious

Misadventures

of

Tubby Wexler,

Private Investigator

Copyright © 2009 Steven W. Johnson

Smashwords Edition

http://www.stevenwjohnson.com

Cover Art:

Copyright © 2009 Glenda Lloyd, Welling, UK

Other Books by Steven W. Johnson

Fiction

Not Much of a Crime

Long Tales & Short Shorts

Hard Times and Soft Soled Shoes

(The Curious Misadventures of

Tubby Wexler, Private Investigator

Volume 2)

Nonfiction

Need A Job? Publish A Book! with OpenOffice

The Misadventures

The Mystery of the Missing Vowel

The Case of the Droopy Drawers

The Aluminum Magnet Adventure

The Tale of the Blue Flamingo

Bones in the Water

The Chinese Laundry Conundrum

Errors Apparent

The Runaway Bribe

The Odd Women

Wedding Bells

A Slip of the Tongue

Footprints On My Butt

The Thirteenth Puzzle

Who Wants To Be A 5th Grader?

That Time of the Year

Getting Even With Evan

The Cock & Bull Story

The Sniper

Precious Moments

The Terrorist Cell

Grandma Gone Wild

Vesperados!

Drive-Thru Banking

The Word According To Tubby

The Mystery of the Missing Vowel

Tubby Wexler was sitting quietly behind his desk. His secretary, Julia, had gone home for the evening and he was simply enjoying the silence. No phone, no clicking of the keyboard, no rumble of the dying air conditioner. Just Tubby and his private, uncensored thoughts about…

…Julia was dressed in a very short, very tight, bright red spandex skirt. Her almost nonexistent waist was cinched into a frightfully white leather belt. And her massive boobs were barely covered with a sheer black lace bra visible beneath a loose fitting, almost transparent…

His musings were shattered! Some gorilla was beating down the door to the front office!

Ignore them, he thought. Ignore them and they’ll go away. Ignore them - they’ll go away. Ignore them - they’ll go away. Ignore them - they’ll go away.

Tubby fought to restore his peace with the mantra. But the gorilla didn’t go away. In fact, the pounding on his door became even more insistent! The pounding was now accompanied by an incoherent, shrill, piercing scream!

It broke through and pulled Tubby away from his mantra. He found his ears trying to pick out syllables beyond the two doors that separated him from the gorilla.

What? he asked himself. A missing towel?

That did it. If there’s one thing Tubby couldn’t stand, it was a mystery. That’s why he became a private detective. He worked hard honing his detecting skills through the Portland Direct Internet Detectives Institute.

Sure, some said it was only a internet diploma mill scam and that the courses he took were meaningless in the real world. But Tubby graduated with honors and in record time! He managed to compress a three-year course into nine short months.

And, now that he had his PI license from PDIDI he was sure that one of these days, he would get a real case like his heroes, Phillip Marlow, Sam Spade and Mike Hammer. No more traipsing through the dog pound looking for Mrs. Clark’s runaway pooch.

Maybe the gorilla at the door was the case he’d been waiting for!

Easing his feet from his desk, he struggled out of the chair designed for a person two hundred pounds lighter than Tubby. Seconds later, he threw open the outside door and was confronted by a hysterical young woman.

She was beautiful. Tall, thin, blond, built like a rail and dressed in clothes that probably cost more than he would earn from ten years worth of trips to the pound.

Are you Tubby Wexler? she asked in a sweet, panicked voice.

Yes…

She threw herself into his arms. You’ve got to help me find it!

Find what, he asked, trying to pry her arms from around his neck. Please come into my office and have a seat…

It’s gone! I can’t find it! You’ve got to help me…

He finally managed to loosen her grip and lead her into his office.

Please be seated, Miss…

Jennifer Hilton. I’m Jennifer Hilton! She couldn’t believe there was anyone that didn’t know who she was. After all, she had her own TV series Cuttin’ Loose With Jennifer where she cruised all the trendiest bars around the country nailing the hottest studs available. And she’d just finished a six-week jail term for her thirteenth DUI. That was all over the papers and TV! She saw his face failed to recognize the name.

"I REALLY AM Jennifer Hilton!"

So you said, Miss Hilton. Now, how can I help you? Disbelief. That was the only word Tubby could use to describe the look on her face. She was apparently couldn’t believe that he wasn’t treating her like the Queen of England or something.

Again, her speech became incoherent as she tried to explain.

Whoa! Slow down, Missy. Give my ears a chance, will you?

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Now, please. Start at the beginning.

She took a deep breath.

Jackson and I sat down for a quiet game of Scrabble…

And Jackson is?

My boyfriend!?! Don’t you watch any of the important TV shows?

So you and your boyfriend were sitting down to play a game… And?

See. Jackson and I sat down for a quiet game of Scrabble because I have this thing here on my ankle. She raised her foot to his desk and pulled up a trouser leg to display the monitoring device the courts had ordered she wear.

Tubby knew from his studies that the ankle bracelet wasn’t supposed to go beyond 300 feet of the monitoring device without notifying the probation department first.

And, he prompted.

"Well, Jackson always wins. So, while I was in jail I started reading something called Roger’s Tyrannosaurs Rex…

"Roget’s Thesaurus, maybe?"

"…Yeah. Whatever! I mean – like - it has so many words I never knew existed! You know, funny words like ‘auld’ and ‘prophylactic’ – did you know prophylactic means ‘hindrance’ not ‘rubber’?

Seneway, it was my turn and I put down ‘c-r-w-t-h’ on a triple word score for 39 points and Jackson tells me I have to use a vowel! I told him ‘W’ is the vowel and he told me it wasn’t! So I told him it was and he said ‘No’ and I said ‘Yes’ and he said ‘No’ and…

So what happened? Tubby asked, impatiently.

He said prove it and I can’t.

You can’t what?

I can’t find it. It’s disappeared…

What do you mean it’s disappeared?

Jennifer looked at him with the same look of revulsion she had given the judge when she was sentenced to jail. The vowels are ‘A’ ‘E’ ‘I’ ‘O’ ‘U’ and sometimes ‘Y’. See? No ‘W’.

So why didn’t you pull out the thesaurus and prove it that way?

Because Jackson was being a ass!

I see. So, what do you want me to do?

Prove to Jackson that ‘W’ really is a vowel.

Where the hell was Julia when he needed her?

Okay. Swinging around to his computer, Tubby turned the monster on and waited… And waited… And waited… Finally, he logged into Google and typed ‘How many words use W as a vowel’.

It took only seconds for the web links to come up. Jumping his cursor to the third link he found, a page popped up that included:

Crwth – an ancient Welsh musical instrument similar to a lyre.

Cwm – a basin within a mountain with steep edges that sometimes contains a lake.

Hmph.

What? Jennifer asked.

Here’s at least two. Both of Welsh origin. He printed the page.

She pulled a one hundred dollar bill from her pocket and tossed it on his desk.

Thanks, Tubby. You’re the greatest! Grabbing the paper from his hand, she ran from his office.

Tubby worked his way to the bathroom hoping to find a bandage to cover the paper cut on his index finger. Then he returned to his chair and shut down the computer.

Tubby Wexler was sitting quietly behind his desk. His client, Jennifer Hilton, had gone home and he was simply enjoying the silence. No phone, no computer hum, no rumble from the dying air conditioner. Just Tubby and his private, uncensored thoughts about…

…Jennifer was dressed in a very short, very tight, bright red spandex skirt. Her almost nonexistent waist was cinched into a fright…

His musings were shattered! Again, some gorilla was beating down the door to the front office!

Ignore them, he thought. Ignore them - they’ll go away. Ignore them - they’ll…

Open up, Wexler! It’s the police…

The Case of the Droopy Drawers

Tubby Wexler smiled to himself as he pulled a clean pair of pants from the closet, fresh from the Chinese Laundry. It’d been less than a year since Tubby got his P.I. sheepskin from the Portland Direct Internet Detectives Institute (PDIDI) and he was finally turning a profit. Well, at least enough to pay his secretary, Julia, half salary and get his suit cleaned once a month, whether it needed it or not.

Tubby was a big man, topping out at over 350 pounds - not tall, only 5’ 7" – still he was looking forward to being a frequent customer at Everett’s Big & Tall Men’s Store. And now that he had his first really big case, he was raring to go.

Mrs. Clark called him last night, as he was locking up his rundown, barely livable, two-room office in the Hamilton building. Precious, her damned runaway pooch, had been dognapped. He was a pedigree Dandie Dinmont Terrier. A damned rat dog bred on the border between England and Scotland. It was longer than tall, had powerful rear legs that were longer than its front legs and a sissy poof of hair on the top of its head. And, even though Tubby hated chasing around after the damned pooch, it was a steady income he couldn’t refuse at this point.

The dognapper was demanding $100,000 in singles and fives for the safe return of Precious or Mrs. Clark would find …precious little of Precious on her front porch Wednesday morning…

Precious! What a sissy name for a male dog. Precious my ass, Tubby muttered to himself. The damned dog hates Mrs. Clark and his damned name! No wonder he keeps running away.

Tubby rose from the bed and took a step. He fell. He’d done it again! He’d put one leg at a time into the same pant leg again and tried to walk! One of these days, he swore to himself, he was going to get it right the first time.

Tubby struggled back onto the bed and squirmed out of his pants. Then, very carefully, not thinking about anything but putting one leg in each pant leg, Tubby stood to pull his pants over his waist, buckle his belt and lift his suspenders over his shoulders. Sitting on the bed again, he spread his legs