Duby's Doctor (35 page)

Sylvie looked at Les in absolute
confusion.

"Honey, they say McGurk killed a man," Les
told her. "After all these years, I can't believe you never knew. I
thought Harry would've told you all about it."

Stunned, Sylvie gulped the water from the cup
like an android. Without looking at Leslye, Sylvie handed her the
empty cup. "I guess Harry and I never really talked much," Sylvie
said.

Out in the parking lot, Walt was reaching to
open the door of his truck when Dan Stern wedged himself between
Walt and his goal. "Who do you think you are?" Dan sneered from six
inches away.

"Harry's partner, Slick Face. Who do you
think you are?" Walt responded.

"Les and I were Harry's partners, Dogpatch.
Real partners, in multi-million-dollar joint ventures, not some
two-bit horse farm in Podunk Holler. You're not a business partner,
you're a joke."

Without raising his voice, Walt responded,
"And you're a brass-plated thief."

Dan took a good Ivy League swing at Walt, but
Walt sidestepped it and landed a solid back-alley uppercut to Dan's
jaw. Dan went down on one knee and stayed there, wiping blood from
a split lip.

Standing over Dan with his fists poised for
more, Walt said, "Harry never had to worry about finding my hands
in his pockets. Tell me, did Harry kill himself when he learned you
two had stole him broke, or did you blow him away because he caught
you at it?"

"It was a gas leak," Dan insisted, favoring
his swollen, bleeding lip. "An accident. Happens every day. You can
ask the police, the Marine Patrol, the coroner, anybody." A new
gleam entered Dan's eyes, and he smiled wickedly. "But you won't.
You don't think I murdered Harry. This," he gestured at the two of
them, "is all a smoke screen to hide how you tried to get Harry's
half of the ranch from Sylvie before Harry's body was even in the
grave. Y'know, if I were going to be suspicious of anybody,
Dogpatch, I'd be suspicious of you. We both know you're capable of
murder, don't we?"

Walt moved as if he wanted to kick Dan's
perfectly capped teeth down his throat, but he decided against it.
He swung into his truck instead.

As the truck roared out of the lot, Dan stood
and wiped his face with his Hermes handkerchief. Then he dusted the
knees of his trousers and re-entered the funeral home.

End of Sample Chapters

of

SYLVIE’S COWBOY

by

Iris Chacon

Enjoy These

Sample Pages

From

SCHIFFLEBEIN’S FOLLY

Lloyd Schifflebein is obsessed with adopting six
special needs children. He has been working and planning toward
that goal all his life. But it looks like Lloyd will need
supernatural help to (1) keep his business going, (2) find a
suitable woman to marry, and (3) convince the adoption authorities
that Lloyd’s not crazy.

This would all be so much easier if his teapot would
stop talking!

PROLOGUE AND SAMPLE CHAPTER

In the oldest and most perfect pottery studio
in the universe, the walls glowed with ethereal light. The ceiling
was high enough to be hidden by clouds. The only flaw in the
studio’s splendor was its single door, which was narrow, wooden,
plain, and scarred. Through that door bustled a peculiar, small
person sporting a cocked stovepipe hat. He closed the door and
waited politely for the Potter to acknowledge him.

The diminutive visitor looked like a 19th
century sidewalk newsboy, or he might have been a
taller-than-average leprechaun. Truly, he could be both, either, or
neither, as the situation demanded. He was older than he looked by
several million years, but he could pass for middle-aged on any
planet. His name was Orkney.

Orkney watched in silence as the Potter
fashioned a teapot and then its lid. He watched the Potter paint
the raw clay and then set the two pieces into a kiln for
firing.

A glance at the nearby workbench revealed a
freshly painted vase, an urn, some candelabra, cups, saucers, a
platter, but no other teapots.

When a minute had passed, or it may have been
a year or a decade (time having no meaning in the studio), the
Potter lifted the fired teapot from the kiln and set about painting
a face upon it. Orkney neither moved nor spoke during all that
time.

“Good to see you, Orkney,” said the Potter,
at whose smile Orkney nearly floated with happiness.

“You called, Guvnor?” Orkney said, sounding
like a London street urchin—which he could be if called upon.

“Time to go to work again, my son,” the
Potter said, putting the finishing touches on the teapot’s facial
features. “It’s been thirty-two years, seven months, four days, and
six hours since the last job, by human reckoning.”

“Human. So it’s to be earth again, sir?”

The Potter put down his paintbrush and
stepped back to evaluate his creation. He produced a neon green
card from among the folds of his robe and flipped the card toward
Orkney. Orkney remained absolutely still while the card wafted
across the room and lodged itself securely in the band of his
stovepipe hat. “That’s the name and address where you’ll deliver
this teapot,” said the Potter.

Orkney retrieved the card from his hatband
and read it. He blew out air. “Coo! This bloke? They think ‘e’s
bonkers already, Guv. This’ll get ‘im locked up for sure!”

“Just deliver the teapot.”

Orkney looked at the teapot with its newly
painted face. “But i’s still wet!”

A gust of wind swept through the studio,
billowing fabrics and rustling small items on the workbench.

“It’s dry now,” the Potter said. He placed
the lid on the teapot then handed the pot to Orkney.

As Orkney accepted the teapot, it grinned and
winked at the Potter.

CHAPTER 1: THE DELIVERY

Lloyd had a philosophy: If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it. If it ain’t on clearance (defined as at least 70
percent off), don’t buy it. If it’s less than 50 years old, it’s
too good to get rid of. If it’s more than 50 years old, it’s an
antique and therefore too valuable to get rid of. It was a blessing
that Lloyd had never married because his philosophy probably would
have driven some poor female to commit murder sooner or later.

That’s not to say Lloyd was undesirable as a
man. Indeed, women above the age of 50 found him adorable and
wanted to mother him. Women in their 40s found him polite,
attentive, an excellent listener, and the perfect date for
weddings, graduations, awards ceremonies, even funerals.
Thirty-something ladies felt he wasn’t career-driven enough, but he
had a respectable investment portfolio and a cute butt.
Twenty-somethings at the gym on Lloyd’s workout days sent text
messages to their friends about his great body—sometimes they even
posted Lloyd videos on YouTube.

Despite his positive attributes, however,
Lloyd had reached the age of thirty-two years, seven months, four
days, and six hours without finding Miss Right and converting her
into Mrs. Lloyd Schifflebein. Yes, Schifflebein. A surname
decidedly lacking romance in addition to being difficult to spell
and way too long a signature for checks and the backs of credit
cards.

Supposing Miss Right were willing to overlook
the awkward appellation, there was one other impediment to wedded
bliss. Lloyd devoted his whole life to his children. Children he
didn’t yet actually have, but he was working on it. He had been
working on it all his life. He had filed his first formal
application to adopt on his 20th birthday, having been turned away
on his 18th and 19th. This devotion to his as-yet-unadopted
children led many people to deduce that Lloyd Schifflebein was
crazy. Big and strong, sure. Cute, maybe, but loony
nonetheless.

On the afternoon of Orkney’s mission to
Lloyd’s house, Lloyd had laid aside his carpentry tools, locked his
woodworking shop, and settled in the kitchen to brew a cup of tea
and make an important telephone call. An ancient teakettle on the
old Kenmore stove began to bubble and then whistle, blowing steam.
Lloyd was lifting the kettle from the burner when his doorbell
rang, startling him into dropping the kettle, which shattered into
snowflake-size pieces on the tile floor. Lloyd had never seen
stainless steel behave that way. It should have been dented or
bent, but shattered? And where was the water? How weird.

Lloyd bent to pick up the mess, but the
doorbell clanged again. He sighed and stepped over the debris on
his way to answer the door.

He opened his front door to find Orkney on
his threshold with a brown box in hand, clipboard under one arm,
and pencil behind one ear.

“Delivery for Schifflebein,” said Orkney.
“Sign ‘ere, if ya please, Guvnor.” Orkney offered Lloyd the
clipboard and pencil. Lloyd signed, then he exchanged the clipboard
and pencil for Orkney’s brown box.

“Well, g’day, Guvnor, and good luck.”

Abruptly, thunder boomed out of a clear
sky.

Orkney startled and glanced heavenward. He
removed his hat respectfully and backed away from the door, keeping
one eye on the heavens.

“No! Not luck, sir. I didn’t mean luck, sir.
I meant to say, uh, Lor’ bless ya. G’day and Lor’ bless ya,
sir.”

Lloyd, too, examined the clear skies and even
held out his open hand to check for precipitation, but there was
none. He turned to thank the strange little man, but Orkney had
simply disappeared. Lloyd stepped outside the door and glanced up
and down the street, but there was no sign of a delivery truck or
driver. More weirdness. What a day. Shaking his head, Lloyd
returned to his kitchen with his brown box.

He left the box on the counter, swept up and
discarded the remains of his erstwhile teakettle, and walked down
the hall to his home office to make his phone call. He opened a
four-inch-thick file folder on his desk, found a number, and
punched the digits into his phone.

“May I speak with Mrs. Walken, please?” he
asked the answering receptionist. “Retired? But she couldn’t have
been more than 50! ... Oh, really. Well, she sure didn’t sound 62.
My goodness.”

He paged quickly through the thick file and
found his answer. “Wow, I guess it has been, goodness, twelve years
now that she’s been handling my file. ... Schifflebein, yes. You
know my case? ... Really! Everybody, huh. ... Well, do you know
who’s handling my file now that Mrs. Walken has retired? ...
Uh-huh. ... Uh-huh. ... Well, would you please ask whoever draws
the short straw to call me? ... Yeah, that’s still my number. You
have an amazing memory. ... Really! Taped to the desk. Goodness.
... Thank you very much, then. I’ll wait for your call, her call,
or his call, somebody’s call. ... Right. ‘Bye.”

Lloyd put down the phone, slumped in his
chair with long legs extended before him. A black-and-white rabbit
hopped through the office door, across Lloyd’s ankles, and onward
to the futon against the opposite office wall.

“Montalban, don’t eat my bed,” Lloyd said
absently. The rabbit reversed course, crossed Lloyd’s ankles going
the other direction, and left the room.

After several minutes of staring at nothing,
Lloyd slapped his knees as if encouraging himself. He rose and
returned to the kitchen, where he removed a paring knife from the
cutlery drawer and proceeded to open Orkney’s brown box. He lifted
the brand new teapot and placed it on the stove with its brightly
colored face visible from the center of the room. “Goodness, this
is providential,” he said. “Who sent you?”

The teapot didn’t answer, and there was no
return address on the brown box. In fact, there was no address at
all on the brown box. Lloyd turned the box over and around, but it
was blank on all sides. “My goodness,” Lloyd murmured.

At the Department of Children and Families,
the receptionist delivered a Pepto-pink message slip to the desk of
a supervisor. “Walken’s nutty guy called,” the receptionist said.
“Who do I give it to?”

“I’ll take it,” the supervisor said, and rose
from her chair to take the message in hand.

The receptionist returned to her desk, and
the supervisor walked down an alley between cubicles to the lair of
Hepzibah Stoner, Social Worker Extraordinaire.

Stoner was the unofficial hit-woman of
DepChilFam (as she liked to call it, having become accustomed to
such amalgamated nomenclature while serving in the United States
Marine Corps). Stoner had the compassion of Florence Nightingale,
the relentless determination of Indiana Jones, and, sadly, the face
and physique of Winston Churchill.

The supervisor leaned into Stoner’s cubicle
and placed the phone message on the desk. “Kook call,” said the
supervisor. “Walken strung him along for twelve years hoping he’d
give up, but he doesn’t get it. Name’s Snicklebean, or something
like that. Everybody’s talked to him at one time or another, but
nobody’s had the guts to just tell him no and put him out of his
misery. Something about the guy seems to turn people soft. Find the
file. Go see him. Tell him to get lost, and close the file.”