Mystery Noir

Little Monsters Part 1

After a six and a half weeks of teaching Penny the ropes with Private Investigation by taking a few jobs involving us tailing cheating spouses or catching liars trying to defraud others, I had dropped her off for several days with Mo. I spent a couple of those days sitting in a hotel room, working on the more mundane paperwork of my business, completing reports and compiling invoices. Though I debated driving to Mawaska to use the time off to set up my new place and business, I then spent a couple more days catching up on sleep and reading, giving my body some much needed recovery after a long few months from the adventurous rollercoaster I had put it through.

By the time I felt capable of travelling, it was already almost time for me to meet up with Penny, and I had not even found us another job yet. There were a couple offers, though I felt a bored frustration with the idea of sitting in parking lots, taking pictures of infidelity or lies. I sat, scowling at my inbox as I tried to evaluate based on money, travel time, and interest, which job we should do next when another email arrived.

Another offer for the Colorado job.

I supposed I should have responded and refused after all this time, but a part of me had secretly been toying with the idea. The amount of money being offered for the job, a lot of it upfront, was a hard thing to turn down. I'd had steady, well-paying work for a while and I wasn't hurting, but with the property purchase and an employee, I had more bills than I had before.

But the amount of money was suspicious in and of itself. Urisks supposedly infested the property we were supposed to investigate and 'clear'. I had never faced them before, and the lore was murky, though reassuring.

They were territorial, but lonesome. Friendly but with a ghastly appearance that frightened off anything but their own kind. Some sources indicated they were associated with still water and ponds, others said they were the same thing as a Brownie. But either way, they were supposed to be relatively harmless. On a scale from tinker bell to blood thirsty wendigo, these things were tinker bell crossed with a carebear.

But, like a lot of fae folk, they had wicked senses of humour and often played tricks that didn't help their likability. The property needed to be cleaned up and sold, but no one would go near it because of the Urisk infestation, though most of the people in the area just labelled it as 'bad luck' or 'haunted'.

I would make the same amount doing this job, which should only take a few days, a week at max, as I had on the last several weeks of work. And the employer was offering near as much for Penny's salary.

There was another thing holding me back. Colorado was where my grandparent's cabin was. In fact, the property was less than an hour away, and though I had visited and spent time in the cabin as I travelled around, I was now at a loathe to go. After the talk about the fairies bringing up long-buried thoughts, regrets and resentments about my mother, I dreaded going there and inevitably looking for the letter in her boxes of things.

Who are you?

I typed out that reply and stared at it, my cursor hovering over the send button. A buzz from my phone distracted me and I deleted those three words as I read a text from Penny confirming our meeting. I replied, including a query as to whether she was willing to go to Colorado in my message.

Her response was a simple. "Sure. I've got your back."

With only my own paranoia and frustration at the lack of information on who I was dealing with holding me back, I finally replied to the email confirming that I would take the job. I asked for more and gave a loose date of when we'd be able to start several days after I intended to be there.

I could only hope that if it was a trap, we could catch them unaware and eliminate most, if not all, of the danger.

Then I closed my email window and researched the job. Not just the Urisks, but I queried the location, any information of its history and past owners. I was partially trying to understand what had happened to the properly that made the Urisk want to claim it, but I also hoped that somewhere in that history was something that would connect to my employer.

The only response I received from them was the money transfer of the agreed amount. Not long after I was truly entrenched in research did I pause to consider one glaring issue with all of this.

I had never replied to the employer, to tell them that I had an employee. Nor had I given them Penny's name. Who, amongst the group at Vegas, did this employer have contact with, and why were they selling information about me? I didn't trust the coincidence to be benign, if only because of the comment I had received in Mawaska about the backup.

Everything made me think that whoever this was, was connected to those who had a serious hate for supernatural creatures. Which meant that their idea of clearing the property and mine were going to be completely different.

I emailed Rashel, asking her if she had received any job offers from a loosely described employer with an MO like mine. I didn't want to spell out all the information, not even to Rashel. For as much as I considered her a friend, I didn't completely trust her not to be just as implicated as anyone else.

Then I closed my laptop and shut off my working brain for the rest of the evening.

The next day had me on the road to go pick up Penny. It was cool and rainy by the time I pulled up at the truck stop in New Mexico. Mo's bright orange Subaru pulled up beside my car and as I was checking my phone, Penny said her goodbyes and climbed into my car.

"Ready boss? What's the plan?" Penny asked once she was settled and I was pulling my car onto the highway, driving north.

I offered her a grin, though I didn't feel nearly as confident as my cavalier smile tried to convey. "Well, my cabin isn't very far away from where the job site is. There isn't much by way of hotels in the area, probably twice the distance from it than my place would be." I offered, side glancing at her curiously as I continued. "It has power and running water, it's not the ritz but..."

Penny grinned and offered me an easy shrug. "Sounds perfect. We can stop at a grocery store closer to it, pick up food and stuff."

Part of me was relieved that she was okay with it. But another part of me had hoped she'd ask to stay somewhere else. Not that I truly expected her to have an issue with it, Penny was easygoing and adaptable if she was nothing else.

I just nodded after a few moments, then turned my attention back to the drive, which was slowly turning colder as we headed up into higher elevations. Admittedly, the Mustang wasn't the best thing to be driving into the Rockies in late fall, but it was the only vehicle I had and I knew that I wouldn't be going anywhere completely off-road with it.

The light dusting of snow that began to fall as we approached the nearest town to my cabin, and subsequently where the job was, threatened to derail my confidence in my rear-wheel drive muscle car.

Penny spoke up, her voice gentle. "What made you change your mind?"

"I don't know." I shook my head and glanced briefly to her, before turning back to the road. The weather wasn't awful, but I knew enough about the mountains to know that it could change in a moment. It was dark, though I could feel the behemoths of the Rockies looming nearby as the town lights came into view. "I mean, I was kind of bored with the human shite. And I'm hoping that maybe we can figure out more about this person by their connection to this place. Just as long as they don't send more of those asshole hunter types our way."

"You think they're malevolent?" Penny sounded surprised, though when I glanced at her, I only saw curiosity.

I shrugged. "I just have no idea why they would have sent me to Mawaska, and I think they sent Todd and Luke there as well." I paused for a moment, frowning out the window, then letting out a slow breath. "They knew I had an employee named Penny. So someone from Vegas gave them info on us."

Penny was silent, and before she could respond we were pulling up to the grocery store, which was thankfully still open. By the time we were done shopping and back on the road, whatever Penny's response might have been, was forgotten.