Doublemint Gumshoe

By Phillip T Stephens and April Grey

The first novel written for Twitter is finally available in print (expanded and revised).

When a galactically inept inspector tackles the world's most illusive AI, prepare for apocalypse. Determined to find missing programmer Alyson Sweetcheeks, Detective Bob unleashes a war between a tech conglomerate, a covert cyber gang, the mob, and a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Too Bright Girls Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781732997318

Phillip T Stephens

During my freshman year in high school, the principal called me into his office and said, "I hear you're hanging out with left-leaning radicals looking to undermine my authority and the authority of the teachers and the school." Now anyone who knew me, also knew I was the Baptist preacher's kid and I may have been a smart-ass but this was San Marcos, Texas in 1968. Shit kicker country. A town where we woke up to the sound of roosters and aroma of the stockyards. I wouldn't know a leftist from a hash pipe. I said, "Not really, but if you'll point me to them, I'll be glad to join." Principals have no since of humor and so he took me at my word. He failed to point me toward any leftist companions, but he did assume I wished their association. Nor would I dissuade him of his delusion, for I discovered in that moment the safety of hiding behind false assumptions rather than emerging into the light. You see, my parents, staunch fundamentalists (my father a Baptist minister and my mother a Presbyterian who married a Baptist minister) believed aliens were the devil's deception, like fossils and evolution. What a wonderfully cruel joke the aliens played on them when they left me on their doorstep on Christmas Eve. Alien babies can't be distinguished from humans. My parents had difficulties adjusting to alien adolescence, but they preferred it to demon possession. Nonetheless, the many hours I spent writing human dialogue in an attempt to master human role playing evolved into fiction and made me the writer I am today. I'm still an embarrassment to my parents, but an adopted alien fiction writer is no less an embarrassment than any other fiction writer who can't get a real job. (Phillip and his wife Carol rescue and foster Alien-Siamese hybrids in Austin, Texas hoping to rehome them, implant free, before the invasion. You can find many warm loving hybrids, indistinguishable from earhling kitties at austinsiameserescue.org.)

Book preview

a novella by

Phillip T. Stephens

(originally written for Twitter)

Fiction

Science Fiction

Humor

Mystery

Noir

Wry Noir

©2022 by Phillip T. Stephens

ISBN: 978-1-7329973-1-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901662

Too Bright Girls Publications

(in cooperation with Electric Eclectic)

Austin, TX

[e-mail]

Illustrations by Phillip T. Stephens

Thanks to vecteezy, pixabay, and freepik for original source materials, including contributions by Inna Mikitas, Rantai Images, Eric Larsen, Christel Sagniez, RGY23, JCK5D. Doublement twins courtesy of Twins of Sedona)

Too Bright Girls is a family publisher.

Not accepting submissions or queries.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact publisher,

Doublemint Gumshoe is a work of fiction. Readers should not mistake the characters or events in this story as conveying real people or places.

Praise for Doublemint Gumshoe

Stephens takes a genre by the throat and shakes it until it cries, ‘uncle.’

April Grey, Brahm Stoker finalist and author of Finding Perdita.

A dry humored, pun filled detective novel grounded somewhat in our reality. That’s to say, if you like UFOs and pop-culture references in your mysteries, this one’s for you.

Dejah Payne, author and illustrator, Princezz comics

Shades of Thomas Pynchon and Douglas Adams, Phillip T. Stephen’s novella is a psychedelic soup of noir and black humor mixed in with some sci fi antics. Detective Bob is not a lovable but perhaps misguided Detective on the case a missing womannamed Allison Sweetcheek. Bob presumes its murder, but he always presumes that. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations by the author, this sexy, funny and very gripping mystery will keep you on the edge of your seats, gripping your sides as you howl with laughter and astonishment at the strange goings on in San Noema, California.

Christine Stevens, editor of the Humor publication The Haven.

Introduction

by April Grey

Phillip T. Stephens is my kind of writer. He uses language hard and puts it up wet. Hyperbole holds no horror. He takes a genre by the throat and shakes it until it cries, uncle or at least taps out. He isn’t afraid to mix it up: humor, dark humor, horror, science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, weird noir and gonzo. He does them all. He probably has even more on his palette but those are the stories which I buy. 

I can’t resist really, even to the point of doubling up in my Hell’s Series anthologies—in six books I’ve published eight of his stories. What else can you do but grab his fantastic tales of Lucifer and his annoying, ever happy victim, Pilgrim? While the main story was told in his novel, Raising Hell, addition tales of the two are found in my anthologies Hell’s Mall, Hell’s Heart, Hell’s Bells, and Hell’s Kitties. 

April Grey, a Bram Stoker finalist, is the author of Finding Perdita, Chas-ing the Trickster and St. Nick’s Favor. She edited all seven volumes of the Hell’s Horrors Anthology series.

Story Outline

Detective Bob

A girl vanishes and the worst detective in the world is tasked to chase her.

Biggbrayne

The mob kidnaps Bob and encourages him to drop the Alyson investigation. For that matter, everyone insists that Bob drop the investigat ion.

TynyDyne

A visit to TynyDyne to search Alyson’s office for clues turn up nothing but does spark a fierce debate between conflicting point-of-view narrators.

Buddhoblitz

Members of an online gang warn Bob that finding Alyson could trigger a nanobot apocalypse.

Sally

Bob searches Alyson’s apartment and meets the world’s nosiest neighbor.

**Reboot**

Bob wakes up to a world that has erased Alyson from its records, and is abducted by aliens when he tries to find out why.

Alyson

Alyson finally appears and reveals that Bob was not only barking up the wrong tree, there was no tree to bark up. Or, how do you spell patsy?

Detective Bob

🕘

All that remained in Alyson Sweetcheek’s hotel suite:

one cornflower dress,

one navy dress suit with skirt,

one flash drive, and

six Doublemint gum wrappers.

Six wrappers. Crumpled on the bedspread next to her suit. Silver foil twisting in and out of the iconic paper strip: green arrows over mint green mint leaves on a whirlpool printed in green. 

Sunlight drifted past the jacket which was draped over the desk chair—its shoulders straightened, lapels flat. Dust motes danced in the sunlight path like fairies in a daydream. 

The hotel notified Alyson’s sister Sally. Sally called Alyson’s boss William Zuckerchange. Zuckerchange called the cops. Any sense of urgency collided with the writing on the police department wall: We see this shit a dozen times a day.

Another blonde missing from her room? Low on the list of police priorities. In San Noema a missing blonde was as common as a day without rain, as common as open convertibles on Interstate 5 with occupants risking the sulfur-oxide ambiance to tone their rock star tans, as common as baby in bluebonnet photos in Texas and even though San Noema is a California city, were it in Texas missing blondes would be just as common.

Alyson isn’t blonde. Nor dumb, as Bob would discover, but that fact mattered little. As far as the cops were concerned, if a girl wasn’t attached to the wallets of prominent men willing to write five figure checks to city council campaigns (or the daughters of those prominent men) she couldn’t shake a cop from the schedule.

Instead, they sent Detective Bob.  

He skittered across her room. A six-three praying mantis with matchstick limbs and bony fingers probing for clues. He paraded his sleuthing skills in vain. Sally and the hotel manager ignored him to argue over Alyson’s outstanding bill. 

Bob’s partner Duffy leaned against the door frame, ankles crossed, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Wrinkles rode his polyester suit, a suit he bought from the clearance rack of the factory-seconds section at Walmart. He struggled to keep his lids open after a night closing down three different cop bars, which might be why his suit looked slept in. Slept in every night since 1966. 

Duffy was destined to make captain. The guy who disappeared when the first bullet flew and reappeared in time to claim the credit. And the commendation. Veins crept from his eyes and down his nose. Five o’clock shadow from the Sunday before last. His hands? Not a tremble or shimmer, petrified by the cheapest booze on the shelf. 

Bob probed every inch and surface, flipping the pillows, pulling out drawers. He crawled under the bed, hooked the knee of his powder blue polyester suit on a nail. Tore a hole. 

He swore under his breath. Oh, feathers. 

Nothing there.

He stood, brushed the bunny dust and dandruff from his shoulder and continued to probe with his best BIC Pen. He poked through the events guide on the desk, pulled a cloth from his side pocket, wiped the dust from his piano wire glasses and poked through once more. 

Sun from the window glanced off the oily spot at the center of his bald pate, fractured like light hitting a disco ball, and blinded everyone in the room. He swore to solve this case. His first solve (far from his first case). A glance at the cornflower dress and the opened curtains revealed the solution like a prize display. Alien abduction. 

Sally stepped with the precision of a model, legs firm, bronze, a chain tattoo on her ankle. She alliterated perky and petite, from her five-one frame to the gentle slope under her pink crepe blouse to her trim tempting hips. 

Aliens? She turned to his partner. Tell me he’s joking. She smelled of cinnamon and sugar. Bob wanted to sprinkle her on toast. 

Officer Duffy pursed his lips tighter than a nip/tuck with Botox. He pulled his iPhone from his jacket and ran his fingers across the screen. No alien activity reported. He pleaded in silence, Don’t say murder. Please don’t say murder. 

Bob ran his hands through the few strands of hair left to comb. Murder then. It must be murder. 

Detective Bob never solved a case. Once he heard a girl’s heart was on her sleeve and launched a murder investigation. On another case he saw a prostitute’s body with a pimp’s knife in her wound and knew the Mayor killed her. Nor was his grandmother, the Mayor, happy to hear the news. 

Called to investigate a death on the beach, Bob saw the man’s body in a shark’s stomach. He arrested the business partner. 

A contestant collapsed into a bucket of hot dogs at a power eating contest on the Fourth of July.