Still sequestered incognito at Main Beach just south of Brisbane, Ray was exhausted. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Christmas Night had all passed him by without much notice as he feverishly read the Hesse Papers through to their conclusion; but the last page of the manuscript came and went without him still fully understanding the relationships between the Coast of Gold, the Contessa, and the Tunnel of Time.
He lay back in the chair on the balcony of the rented Condo feeling defeated: it was all he could think to do, to reach out for the mobile handset and order in: one of those very expensive pizzas in the hospitality folder and a very cheap bottle of wine. After he had polished both off, he drifted slowly into a kind of hot, after dinner sleep.
The light was dying on all the roads of the world and the breeze from the east streaming in across the pacific started to pick up. Restlessly, Ray began to dream …
It seems Ray Hardly, the Gum Shoe Private Detective has disappeared: but that’s not entirely uncharacteristic of his modus operandi. His comings and goings to and from his office above Salon Dread Heads in Newtown have never been anything but consistently erratic. What has his occasional girlfriend and salon owner Bridget Pantaloon perplexed is not the effort she will have to put in reporting him as a missing person, but  his last, overly cryptic text:
Don’t weight up sweetheart – a meet with the Big Man **%! Closing in on the Contessa. 100 K Jim … Friday AM.
So B is sleeping tonight with a pick axe handle under her pillow. She’s worried that this one could just be Ray’s biggest and most disastrously stupid case yet …
The Time Tourists: a Ray Hardly Mystery; Simeon & Shyster 2018.
You must be logged in to post a comment.