Alexandra Stevens, Private Eye

Slave to a Princess (Kindle)
Fugitive Empath taken and chained to a princess terrified of men. Bestselling P/N Romance

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[Introduction] When Alexandra Stevens inherited her dead husband's Private Investigator business, she found the job to be harder than she had assumed, stranger than she had imagined, and more dangerous than she had feared...

It was her job now. She had to do it because Colby Stevens was no longer around to pay the bills. There was a second reason as well, a very personal reason. She wanted an answer. Who had killed Colby? And why?

But before she could find that out, she had to find her way learning her new occupation - Alexandra Stevens, Private Eye....

I jumped up when the alarm clock went off. Alarm? Why the hell was I hearing an alarm? Then I remembered. No more lazy mornings in bed. I was the breadwinner now. I had to actually "go to work"! Bleh!

My office was a small storefront in a shopping center - Creekside Mall. The "creek" was a sluggish drainage canal in back with a distinct and penetrating odor. The "mall" was a long row of storefronts with a matching three rows of parking spaces. Half the stores were vacant.

At least there was no parking problem. My Honda Civic fit neatly right in front of the door to my office. Looking at the nameplate - Colby Stevens, Private Investigator - I felt a twinge of sadness. For seven years my husband Colby had worked here. But now he was gone and I made a note to get the nameplate changed to Alexandra Stevens. Meanwhile, the light on the answering machine was blinking. Three messages. Business might be finally picking up.

As I pressed the button to hear the messages, I felt a sharp stabbing pain located somewhere near my solar plexus. I recognized it. It was fear.

I had never attempted to do anything on my own. Oh yes, I gave my husband advice sometimes, but he was always in charge, and could take it or leave it. Now I found myself in a position where I had to take care of things, where I was in charge and had no one to lean on.

The first message was from a man who said his name was Greg Noman.- "Mr. Stevens, I am in trouble, When I came home last night, I was arrested. My wife was gone, and the whole house was full of police. They said that the neighbors had called because my wife hadn´t thrown away the garbage as she usually does at 8:13pm every evening. And there were 5 pairs of tennis shoes nailed to our front door."

I immediately called Mr Noman. "Hello, this is Alexandra Stevens. Any word on your wife yet?"

Mr Noman was surprised. "You're a woman? I thought Colby was a man's name."

"That was my husband, Mr Noman. He passed away and I'm the investigator now."

"I'm really sorry to hear that Ms Stevens. Yes, I have my wife back. It was all a misunderstanding. She has been on my back for a long time about my obsession with constantly buying expensive new tennis shoes. She just wanted to make sure I got the point."

"And did you, Mr Noman?"

"Oh yes, I got the point and I'm going to try to control my shoe buying urges. Thank you for calling back, Ms Stevens."

"You're welcome. If you have any other problems, please call me."

"I'll do that. Good-bye."

Well, strike one. Two more messages. I crossed my fingers and listened to the next one. -- "Mr Stevens, this is Martha Heidel. Please call me as soon as possible. Something very strange has happened."

...................................
The Case of the Toddler Husband
...................................

I picked up the phone and called immediately. "Hello?" - "Hello? Is this Martha Heidel? This is Alexandra Stevens, I´ve taken over this firm after my late husband, what seems to be the problem?"

Ms. Heidel didn´t seem surprised at all that I had taken over and continued to say..

"Well, when I woke up this morning, there was something wrong with the plumbing, and when I looked under the kitchen sink to see what might be causing it I saw.......

I could hear the distress in Matha Heidel's voice. "Yes, Ms Heidel," I said. "Please go on. I know it must be difficult."

"I'm all right," she said, but I could hear the quaver in her voice. "Please call me Martha."

"And you can call me Alex, but what did you discover under the sink?"

"It's... It's..."

"Just take a deep breath, Martha, and tell me."

"Oh, Alex, can you come here right away? Please? It's 33 Mapleleaf Court."

There was a click and I was listening to the dial tone. Amazing. I had a new appreciation for what my husband had to deal with.

33 Mapleleaf Court was only a few blocks away. I parked my Civic in the driveway behind an expensive-looking Mercedes sedan. Maybe I could make some money on this case. The home was a large 2-story colonial with a landscaped yard.

When I rang the doorbell, I could hear the doorchimes playing the theme from Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

Martha opened the door and was standing there with a pink silk robe and a disgustingly tacky pink feathered boa round her neck, her hair in curlers and a horrified look on her face.

"Martha? I´m Alex. May I come in?"

Martha stepped aside and let me through the door. As I entered the enormous entrance hall, I almost fell backwards at what I saw.

All the walls were covered with cruicified frogs and the smell was unbearable.

Martha was shaking, and I knew that my first real case was going to be a Humdinger.

Martha grabbed my shoulders. "I'm so glad you came. It's in there."

The livingroom walls were festooned with even more frogs than the entrance hall. Matha grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the kitchen through a hallway that was mercifully free of frogs. Apparently that little decorating flair was confined to the livingroom. "Did you do the livingroom yourself?" I asked.

She looked at me with pale green eyes that were almost childlike. "No, I have a decorator. Do you like it?"

I wondered how long she had been insane. My shoulder bag was reassuringly heavy with the weight of my little revolver. I hoped I wouldn't need to use it, but it was good to know it was there.

"Are you married, Martha?"

She seemed surprised. "Yes, of course. Henry is in the basement."

"Is he? Why doesn't he come up and help?"

Martha laughed, a surprisingly joyful chuckle that almost made me smile. "Oh, he can't do that, silly! He stays in the basement. Hahahaha!"

"Why, Martha?" But she didn't answer me. We were on the threshhold of the kitchen and Martha was trembling as she pointed at the sink.

I didn´t see anything strange.

"what do you mean?" I asked.

"Not IN the sink, UNDER it!!!" she almost screamed pointing her shaking finger.

I opened the cupboard under the sink, and was immediatly overwhelmed by the smell of death.

She had obviously tried to wrench open the pipes, and there was some very thick black goo oozing out of them. The worst part was that it was moving. It was slithering around like a snake.

I didn´t know what to do. I had a feeling that shooting at it wouldn´t do any good.

I looked at Martha. Why did this upset her when she had dead frogs for wallpaper? "Do you have any idea what that stuff is?"

Her lower lip quivered. "I think it's Granny!"

"Your grandmother?"

"No, his!"

"Your husband's?"

"Yes!"

I wondered how weird things would have to get before I ran away screaming. "Listen, Martha. I think we better talk to your husband."

She just stared at me. I said, "Where is the door to the basement?"

Still no words from Martha but her eyes flicked for a moment to the left and I saw a door there. As I reached for it, Martha grabbed my arm. "Don't tell Henry I called for you!"

I shook free of her and opened the door to reveal a long flight of stairs leading down into darkness. "Where's the light switch?"

She was wringing her hands. "It's at the bottom."

Dumb place for the switch. "Hello!" I called down. "Mr Heidel! Are you down there?"

"He's down there, Alex." Her voice was so hoarse and whispery it made me quickly look at her. Her eyes were wide. Definitely crazy.

I had a little flashlight attached to my keychain, so I used that to illuminate the stairs. It was a dim light, but enough. The first step creaked. The next two made no noise.

"Mr Heidel?" I called again, but if he was down there, he wasn't making a sound.

For every step I took, the image of Norman Bates grew more vivid in my mind. Every nerve in by body was screaming to my brain, "PSYCHO!!!"

"Get a grip Alex!" I said to myself. "There is probably a very logical explanation to all of this!"

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I found the light switch. When I flicked it I immediatly heard a whimper, like a dog that had been whipped.

As soon as my eyes got used to the light, I saw a movement in the corner, a long chain caught my eye. As I visually followed it, it ended in the most hideous sight I had ever seen. There, cowering naked in the corner was..

a little boy. Maybe it was time to call the police. This house was too strange and now it seemed a child was being abused. The boy held his arms out to me and grunted. Poor thing! I hurried over to him.

"Oh, you poor little boy!" He hugged me. "Oh, what are they doing to you?" He looked old enough to be able to talk, but he only grunted as I held him tight. My heart was broken. I didn't have any children of my own. I despised people who were lucky enough to have children and then mistreated them.

I held him away from me and asked him gently, "What's your name?"

He looked up at me, smiling now, and said, "Henry."

I felt a little shock run through me. Of course, Martha and Henry could have named their son Henry Junior, but I had a sick feeling that something more bizarre was at work here.

"How old are you, Henry?"

"Thirty-seven," he giggled.

I felt a little dizzy. Too much was happening too fast. I sat down on the floor of the basement with Henry in my lap. How old was this child? Five? Six? Why in hell would he say "Thirty-seven"? Was that something they taught him to say?

"Is your mother's name 'Martha'?"

He laughed. "That's my wife!"

Henry's chain looked very sturdy. It was fastened to the wall with a padlock. Did Martha have the key? It only took me a moment to decide what to do. I would go upstairs and call the police.

"Henry, I will be right back, okay?" I could see he was going to cry. "Don't cry, honey, I will really be right back and then we are going to set you free."

I don't know if he knew what I meant. Had the poor child lived down here all his life?

As I worked my way back to the stairs, I looked around the basement. There were benches filled with laboratory apparatus -- all types of beakers and test tubes and glass tubing connecting them. One bench was filled with electronic equipment and I noticed a table with two computers on it. Was the child's father some kind of mad scientist experimenting on his own child?

Along one wall were stacked hundreds of boxes of what looked like laundry detergent. I picked up one of the bright green boxes. In bold red letters on the front was printed "SLOMO" and on the back there was a picture of a little girl playing in one of those small inflatable kiddie swimming pools. The pool was bright yellow and was in a leafy backyard with a picket fence.

The girl was wearing a one piece bright blue swimsuit but as I looked closer I noticed something odd. It seemed to be painted on her! I couldn't be sure because the quality of the image was so poor. I looked for something on the box to read that would tell me the contents, but the box was completely devoid of printing. How odd. The only print was the five big red letters on the front 'S-L-O-M-O'.

I took the box with me as I started up the stairs. Martha had a lot of questions to answer.

When I got back upstairs the whole house was lit up by candles. I tried the light switches but none of them worked. MARTHA? MAAAARRRRTHAA?! *silence* Where the hell was she? I looked around to try to find a phone but couldn´t find one. I decided to open the curtains in the livingroom to bring in some more light, and open the windows to let in some air. The stench from the frogs was suffocating.

When I pulled back the curtains I found that windows had been all boarded up, and were covered with steel bars.

I decided to leave the house and run over to the neighbor to use the phone, but to my horror I found that all the doors were blocked the same way.

I was trapped.

MARTHA!!!!! MAAAARRRTHAAAAAA!!!! Where are you? What the hell is going on?

While standing in the entrance hall, I realized that I haden´t been on the second floor.

There was a large spiral stairway, the banisters lit by candles all the way up. I thought that that must be where Martha was, so I began to climb the stairs.

Halfway up the stairs there was a loud "click" and then a mechanical noise as all the steps rotated into a position that turned the stairway into a ramp. I fell down and slid all the way back to the bottom. What the hell? This place was a funhouse.

When I got back up on my feet, I pulled my gun out of my bag and ran up the long ramp that used to be a stairway. The upstairs was surprisingly normal, a carpeted hallway with doors to the upstairs rooms. Most of the doors were open and I could see what looked like perfectly ordinary bedrooms. There was a scream behind me.

I whirled around aiming my gun at a wide-eyed Martha. "Don't shoot me!" she yelled, putting her hands over her head.

I lowered the gun. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. I'm just walking around in my home." She had that child-like expression again.

I gestured with my gun toward the ramp/stairway contraption. "What is that thing?"

"My husband had that ramp put in so that Granny could get upstairs in her wheelchair."

It was hard to imagine an old lady climbing a 45 degree slope in a wheelchair. I didn't trust anything about this house or Martha. "Who is the little boy in the basement?"

Martha's lips quivered. A tear appeared in her eye. "That's Henry, my husband."

I stared at her. Was it really worth questioning her? She was so insane that I could believe nothing she said. "I need to use your telephone, Martha, Where is it?"

"It doesn't work," she said.

"I would still like to know where it is."

She pointed at one of the bedrooms. "There is a phone in there."

When I picked up the receiver there was no sound, so I checked to see if it was plugged in.

"They turned it off," said Martha. "I... I couldn't pay the bill and they turned it off."

I could sympathisize since that was the reason I didn't have my cellphone -- nonpayment. I had to choose what bills I paid and the office phone with the answering machine took priority.

"There is a phone next door at Philip's house," volunteered Martha.

"How do I get there? The downstairs is sealed up like a bank vault."

"I'm sorry. I always lock everything when I am going to be upstairs. I'll let you out."

I followed her into another bedroom where there was a control panel mounted on the wall. She pressed a button and the indicator light next to it changed from red to green. Another button pressed and I heard the ramp changing back to a stairway.

I looked hard at Martha. "Why did you turn the stairway into a ramp when I was coming upstairs?"

She was wringing her hands again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You frightened me. I didn't know what Henry told you. I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry!" She was sobbing.

"Okay. Calm down. Everything is going to be all right, I promise you. As soon as I make my phone call, I'll be back. Don't lock me out."

"I won't," she said. "Please hurry."

The front door was unlocked now and from the porch I could see that there was another large home next door. I squeezed through the hedge and rang Philip's doorbell.

Knock,knock,knock,knock!!!! What kind of a doorbell was that? A very pale man with hair as thin and seemingly as soft as eider down opened. "May I help you?" he said, in a voice that sounded like he was choking on oatmeal porridge.

"My name is Alexandra Stevens, I was wondering if I could use your phone?, I have been at you´re neighbor, Martha Heidle´s house and it seems as though her phone isn´t working."

"I´m really getting tired of this" he somehow cooed, with his R´s still stuck in the oatmeal. "Why don´t you ask Henry?, He´s the one that always messes up the electricity."

He seemed so calm that I couldn´t help but think that this strangeness was an everyday occurrence, and I started to wonder if the whole neighborhood wasn´t insane.

What is it they say about people who think that everyone but themself is insane? But I had no doubts about my own sanity. I grew up on a farm and if shoveling horseshit doesn't give you a firm grounding in reality, then nothing will.

"I'm sorry, Mr Philips, but_"

"Philip is my first name. It's Philip Heidel."

"Oh. Are you related to Henry, Mr Heidel?"

"Henry Heidel is my brother."

"He is?" My mind was spinning rapidly trying to weave this new information into the crazy quilt of this case. "I can't help but notice that there seems to be quite a difference in your ages."

"Not really," said Philip Heidel. "I'm 41 and he's 37. Just 4 years difference."

"Do you know anything about the little boy in your brother's basement?"

He looked hard at me. "So you've seen Henry. I guess you were quite surprised."

"Mr Heidel, are you trying to tell me that that little boy is a 37-year-old man?"

"What is your interest in all this, Ms Stevens?"

"I'm a Private Investigator hired by Martha Stevens."

A wry smile twisted his pale features. "And she hired you to investigate Henry?"

"Not exactly. It was about the kitchen sink."

He laughed. "Ah, yes. The Granny problem."

"Mr Heidel, if you know what's going on over there, then I wish you would tell me, because I find the whole situation extremely odd."

He laughed again. "Of course you do. Won't you come in, Ms Stevens? We'll have some coffee and I'll explain the whole thing to you."

As we entered the entrance hall of his home, I admit that I was surprised to see a number of dead frogs pinned to the walls, but I managed to control my expression. Just another hallway decorated with dead frogs. No big deal. Maybe they had the same decorator.

The layout was identical to Martha's, however his kitchen seemed to be devoid of any "Granny" problems. It was a very large, but friendly-looking, kitchen with plenty of room for a small dining table. I sat down and looked around at the yellow wallpaper with its pattern of daisies while he put the water on. There were real daisies in a vase on the table and a copy of the New Yorker magazine.

Philip Heidel set down cups and spoons and a jar of instant coffee. "I'll let you make your own. Do you want any milk?"

"No, just a little sugar."

He pushed a small ceramic chicken toward me. I don't like my coffee extremely sweet. A half a teaspoon of sugar is plenty. He added nothing to his. "So, Ms Alexandra Stevens, you are a descendant of the great Sherlock Holmes..."

"No relation as far as I know."

His eyes twinkled. "I meant in spirit. How does an attractive woman like yourself become interested in detective work? I would think you could be a successful actress or model."

"Thanks for the flattery, Mr Heidel, but_"

"Please! Call me Philip. And may I call you Alexandra?"

"It's just Alex."

"A beautiful name for a beautiful lady."

His flirting was so obvious that I wondered if he was putting me on. I was never much of a flirt - too serious for that - but I couldn't see any other reason for his behavior. Unless he was trying to throw me off track, but I hadn't forgotten why I was here. "Do you have a telephone, Philip?"

"Yes, of course. I left it upstairs. Do you mind if we finish our coffee first?"

"Not at all," I said sweetly, reminding myself to stay alert. "Philip, I noticed that your entrance hall was decorated with dead frogs. I would have found that unusual if I had not just seen the same over at your brother's house."

"And you are wondering why do these people have dead frogs hanging on their walls?"

He was smiling so I smiled too. "Yes! Why do they?"

"Well, it´s all because of Granny. She was once a very renowned zoologist and researcher specializing in amphibians. She worked for a long time in the rain forests until she got too old and had to move back here.

Unfortunatly she found religion, went senile, and went completely insane all at the same time.

One night she had a vision in which the Lord showed himself to her in the form of a frog. He told her that he needed to be crucified for her sake, to rid her of her sins.

So she started to catch bullfrogs and crucify them and hang them on the walls. But when she got too old to go looking for them, we all had to do it for her, because otherwise she would spit and vomit at us and slash us with her jungle machete."

"Martha told me that Granny was in the pipes under her kitchen sink."

Philip smiled. "Is that where she is? I'm glad they finally found her."

I drank the last of my coffee. "Would you like to explain?"

"I don't think you would understand me, Alex. How do you feel?"

"What do you mean?" I did feel a little flushed and woozy.

"I don't want you to hit your head when you fall." He stood up.

"My head?" My voice echoed within my skull - my head, my head, my head... I tried to open my bag and pull out my gun but my hands wouldn't obey me. "What did you do?" I murmured as blackness closed in around me.

* * *

I woke up splashing and sputtering. I was in water. And there was Philip sitting in a lawn chair watching me. "Feeling better?" he said.

I sat up in what seemed to be a child's inflatable play pool. We were outside in the backyard and I was naked. "Where are my clothes?"

Philip was holding my gun pointed at me. "See if you can stand up."

"Like this?" I said, meaning my nakedness.

"If you stay in the pool too long, you will receive an overdose"

There was something familiar about the picket fence that ran along beside the pool. Then I remembered seeeing the picture on the box of SLOMO in the basement - the girl in the inflatable pool in the yard with the picket fence.

I stepped out of the pool and Philip motioned me toward the house. The outside door to the basement was standing open and he pushed me inside. It was Martha's basement. I recognized all the lab equipment, but the boy's chain was lying empty on the floor.

Philip called "Martha!" and she came downstairs. Her hands were shaking as she fastened a collar around my neck and padlocked me to the chain.

"Where's Henry?" I asked. She shook her head, terror in her eyes.

"Maaaarthaaaa....not one word!" Philip warned in a threatening voice. " You go upstairs and tend to that other little matter".

Martha turned around quickly and left the basement. I looked up at Philip. He was just standing there, staring at me with a strange expressionless look in his eyes. "What have you done to me? What´s going on here? What the hell IS that SLOMO stuff?" I felt like I was going to panic any second now.

"Now, now. Don´t you worry about a thing little missy, you just relax, and let Uncle Phil take care of everything. You´ll get to like it soon, they all do in time."

They ALL do? What did he mean by that? Philip gave me one more quick glance and went upstairs.

When he slammed shut the basement door, I tried to call out for help, I thought maybe some passerby or a neighbor would hear me, but to my utter horror the only sound that came out of my throat was a grunt.

Dizziness overwhelmed me, then unconsciousness.

I awoke to the rays of the morning sun streaming in through the tiny high basement window. Martha was standing there looking at me. "How do you feel?" she asked.

My throat was dry and husky. "What happened to me?"

Martha unlocked my chain. "If you hurry you can get away. Here's your clothes. Put them on. He isn't up there."

I hurriedly dreassed. "But what's going on, Martha?"

She had been crying. "I'm sorry I called you. I shouldn't have gotten you involved in this. I know what I have to do now. Here, take this." She shoved a notebook into my hand. "It will explain everything, but you have to hurry and leave before he gets back."

"My car?"

"It's still in the driveway. Hurry!"

I ran up the stairs and out to my car. As soon as I found a phone, I would call the police. In the rear view mirror, Martha waved good-bye.

A few blocks down the road, I found a convenience store and phoned the police, then bought a cup of coffee. Everything here seemed so normal - the clerk, the man buying a bag of potato chips. A fire truck raced by with siren screaming.

My coffee was still warm when the police drove up. I quickly told them about the strange happenings at 33 Mapleleaf Court.

One of the officers looked up in surprise. "33 Mapleleaf? There's a fire in progress there."

"What! Let's go!"

There were flames coming from every window. When the upper story collapsed into the first floor a great flurry of sparks flew skyward. "No one could live through that," murmured a bystander.

Late in the afternoon, after Martha's house was reduced to cinders and I had made a full report for the police, I finally drove home. As I was getting out of the car, I noticed the notebook that Martha had given me. Damn! I should have given that to the police. Well, I could do it tomorrow. Anyway, I was curious to read it myself.

I stumbled to the bathroom and took a long hot shower, then microwaved a frozen dinner and enjoyed a hot meal. Sleep was an attractive idea. Propped up in my bed, I opened the notebook to glance through it before I fell asleep. Two hours later I was still reading.

The phone rang.

"Hello," I said. There was no reply. After a moment I said it again and then hung up. I thought about dialing "Star-6-9" to see who had called, but then the hell with it. I didn't want to spend 75 cents to find out that someone had their caller ID blocked.

Martha's notebook lay open on the bed. It was quite a tale. Her husband Henry had been a brilliant research scientist at International Pharmaceuticals working on anti-aging drugs. His salary was large for a scientist, but Henry had dreams of wealth. When his research made a breakthrough, he knew the real money would be if he patented it himself, so he kept his final research secret from the company and resigned.

What Henry had found was a potential Fountain of Youth, a way to not only stop the aging process, but to actually reverse it and restore youth. He set up a laboratory in his basement so that he could work out the fine details of his process. He experimented with mice and rats, then the family dog. When old Juno became a puppy again, then Henry knew he had something earthshaking in his grasp.

His next subject was his Granny, who was 90 years old and a little senile. After a dip in a kiddie pool full of Henry's anti-aging solution, within a month Granny had developed a middle-aged body. Unfortunately, she was still a little senile and was soon deeply involved with religion and frogs.

Henry worked on his basement lab and soon gave Granny a second dip to try to improve her mind. But Granny ended up as a 9-year-old girl, still senile, only now she was filled with boisterous energy. After having to go hunting for her several times after dark, Henry decided to chain her up at night for her own safety.

Martha was getting more and more worried. "You shouldn't tamper with nature, Henry. It isn't right. People are supposed to grow old."

But Henry moved on. He improved his discovery and tried it out on himself. He now had the body and energy of a twenty-one year old, but Martha knew he had lost something - his caution and sense of responsibility. In keeping with his new youth, Henry had become impulsive and foolhardy. He decided to make up a test batch of his drug and try it out on a small scale. If it was successful, he would have no trouble selling it for millions of dollars to a major drug company.

From his hobby as an amateur photographer, he remembered the term "slow motion" and shortened it to "SLOMO" as the name of his new product. He took a picture of Granny in the swimming pool to show how SLOMO was applied and went to the local screen printers to have 500 boxes printed up. In his haste, he overlooked putting any text on the box to explain SLOMO's function, but he didn't see that as a problem since he could enclose a printed sheet in the box. A bigger problem was the fact that 9-year-old Granny had not been wearing a swim suit when he took her picture. So Martha and Henry spent an afternoon carefully painting swimsuits on all 500 boxes.

He was just about ready to go out and find his first test market subjects when a strange thing happened to Granny. She began to devolve. They had noticed she was growing hair on her arms and legs, but the morning Granny walked on all fours, Martha screamed, "Henry! Your Granny is turning into an ape!"

By the next day Granny was no longer able to speak and looked very much like a chimpanzee. But the devoultion did not stop there. A few days later, Granny had become reptilian and no longer recognized or obeyed Henry and Martha. "We'd better put her in a cage," said Henry, but Granny slithered rapidly away. Although they searched every inch of the house, they couldn't find her.

Henry was worried. If it happened to Granny, then it might happen to him. He decided to let his brother Philip, who lived next door, in on his secret. Philip quickly grasped the financial implications and agreed to keep an eye on Henry in case any changes took place. He didn't have to wait long. Henry soon took another leap backward in the age-reversal process and became a six-year-old.

Martha and Philip were afraid that he would turn into an animal like Granny had done, so they chained him in the basement. Henry agreed. Although he was only six, he still recalled his adult life and understood why they had to chain him.

Later that day Martha saw Granny again in the kitchen sink. By then Granny had devolved into a worm-like creature. Martha was terrified. She didn't know what to do, so she turned on the hot water and the garbage disposal. Granny the worm was squirming around trying to get out of the sink but Martha used the broom to push her back in. There was a sickening growl as the garbage disposal bogged down trying to chew up Granny and suddenly it quit working.

Martha was in a panic. Philip was not home, but she knew he would be angry if she called the police or a plumber, so she opened the yellow pages to "private investigators" and called Colby Stevens.

I closed the notebook. That was where I had joined the flow of events. I knew now that the fire which had killed Martha and Philip and Henry and Granny was not accidental. It was Martha's way of putting things right and making sure no one would ever learn the secret of SLOMO.

.....................................
The Case of Cassandra the Artist
.....................................

The phone rang.

"Hello?" I answered in a tired voice.

"Hello, my name is Cassandra Pandora and I have a problem. I need a private investigator since the police won´t have anything to do with my case."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. "What can I help you with?"

"I am an artist and one of my paintings is missing. The police have been here but since nothing in the apartment seemed to be touched, and they couldn´t find any sign of a break-in and no fingerprints, they think that I am making it up."

I was wondering what the hell I was doing this for, but asked in a calm voice, "And what is your painting called?"

She started panting. "The Equinox Of The Paradigm"

I wrote down a few more details - address and phone number - and told Cassandra Pandora that I would be at her apartment first thing in the morning. Then I fluffed my pillow and drifted off to dreamland.

When I woke up the next morning I wasn´t feeling well. I was stiff all over and had aches and pains everywhere. I supposed that it was just exhaustion after the whole Martha thing. I took a hot shower and headed off to Cassandra`s apartment. When I got to the adress I was given, I took a look around before entering the building. It was an Artisty, bohemian, kind of neighborhood, The buildings were painted in all sorts of colors with Hippie, New age symbols and slogans and flowers and whatever. I was trying to get some idea what kind of situation I was getting myself into this time.

When I got to Cassandras apartment, there was no doorbell, just a huge knocker in the shape of "The Eye Of Horus", I knocked, and Cassandra opened.

She had long blonde hair that fell to either side of her head without a hint of a wave or curl. A tie-dyed headband held it all in place. The wireframed "granny" glasses propped on her perky little nose made her blue eyes look even bigger. Jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals completed her outfit. The jeans were faded, the T-shirt was tie-dyed, and the sandals looked handmade.

"Come on in," she said and held the door open for me.

"OK!! Now tell me all about your missing painting" I said. I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.

" Well this is kind of embarrassing" Cassandra murmered. " The thing is, it´s back." She pointed to a painting on a wall to her left.

I looked up. It was quite large, and though I was no art expert it seemed to be some kind of an abstract. It was mostly yellows, oranges and golds, in no discernable pattern with a couple of splashes of red. I the middle there was an odd almost life-like image of a man in a brown suit, lying on his back with his hands covering his ears, seemingly kicking and screaming.

"well, It´s an interesting painting" I said in a polite voice. "so where did you find it?"

Cassandra got a strange glassy-eyed look on her face. " When I woke up this morning it was back"

I looked at her confused, and said - "well maybe whoever stole it changed their minds?, It is a mystery though how they could get in and out of your apartment twice with such a large painting without leaving a trace."

Cassandra´s eyes widened. " Well, that´s not the most mysterious part, You see that man in the middle?"

My eyes turned towards the painting again. "Yes, it´s uncannily life-like"

With a hoarse whisper she said- " I didn´t put him there, I didn´t paint him".

A tingle went down my spine. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was something strange going on. "So you are saying someone removed the painting from your apartment, painted the image of a man on it, and then returned it to your apartment?"

Cassandra shrugged. "That's right."

"And the police found no sign of a break-in and nothing else was touched?"

"Yes, that's true."

"You heard nothing strange during the night?"

"When I woke up this morning the painting was back on the wall. Would you like some coffee, Ms Stevens?"

"Yes, I would. And please call me Alex."

"Alright, Alex. I'm Cassie to my friends, so call me that."

We sat at the table in her kitchen, drinking our coffee and chatting. She filled me in on her background - married, divorced, no kids. "The man in the painting?" I asked. "Does he resemble anyone you know?"

"No. Though he does seem familiar somehow".

I walked over to the painting to get a closer look. The suit the man was wearing was pin-striped and seemed quite unmodern. It looked like something from the 40´s.

It was hard to discern his facial features. He was screaming and had an absolutly terrified look on his face. I could see that the eyes were brown and that he was very clean shaven with a small scar next to his left temple.

I turned to Cassie. "Is there anything in your life that might have something to do with the 40´s ?"

Cassie frowned. " Not that I know of. I don´t know much about my family, I ran away from home at the age of 14, and haven´t spoken to my parents since. And even before then we didn´t have much contact."

"OK," I said. " I have a feeling we should start digging there. What are your parents' names and where do they live?"

She looked at me for a long moment. "I'd rather not talk about my parents, Alex. I haven't seen them since I was 14 and I don't even know if they are still alive or where they live."

I was shocked, and a little suspicious. Was she lying to me? How could anyone not be curious about their parents? I could understand not having any contact with them, but it was difficult for me to believe she knew absolutely nothing about their current situation. I decided to try a different approach.

"How about that little scar on the man's temple? Does that spark any memories? Have you ever known anyone who was injured that way?"

She got a very strange look on her face and turned away. "Do you want another cup of coffee?" she asked and started to walk towards the kitchen. I could see that she was trying to avoid the question.

I decided to follow her. "Do you need any help?" I asked.

"No, no it´s fine". She handed me the coffee.

"Cassie?" - "Yes?" - "I asked you if you knew anyone who was injured that way. That has a scar near their temple"?

Cassie looked straight into my eyes. She took off her glasses and pulled back her hair.

There, right next to her left temple was exactly the same scar.

"Cassie?" I whispered. "Is that supposed to be you in the painting?"

She put her hands to her eyes and sobbed, "I don't know! I don't know..."

I patted her shoulder. "Maybe we better take another look at that painting..."

When she looked up her eyes were still bloodshot and her lip quivered. "You look. I don't want to see it right now."

I squeezed her shoulder as I got up and walked back to the painting.

The man in the painting was slim. I supposed he could be a woman with short hair wearing a man's suit. But his eyes were brown and Cassie's eyes were blue. Of course, it would be simple enough to wear brown contact lenses...

I couldn't think of any reason why someone might do this manipulation with the painting, or even why Cassie might do it herself. Unless... Unless it was all part of some kind of publicity stunt. Call me in and then let the news media in on the "mystery" painting resulting in a lot of free advertising for Cassie's artwork. It was an angle worth checking out.

Back in the kitchen Cassie had managed to pull herself together, so I asked, "Do you have a gallery that sells your paintings?"

"Two of them. The Whitmore Gallery on Main Street and Jonathan's Galleries out at Woodhill Mall."

I decided to head off to the galleries and see if I could find some kind of clue. I said goodbye to Cassie and told her that I would tell her immediatly if I found out some thing.

The Whitmore Gallery was small. It was hardly detectible. I could see a small glass door stuck between two large clothing stores with a yellow sign at the top that said "Gallery". When I entered the first thing I noticed was a stuffy smell. There were a few paintings hanging on the worn out walls and behind an old desk was a man, probably antique himself.

He didn´t seem to notice me come in, so I let out a small cough to catch his attention. The man looked up from under a pair of black rimmed glasses. "May I help you?"

"Yes, my name is Alexandra and I´m looking for paintings by Cassandra Pandora."

"Oh, well lets see now," He walked over to a wall at the far side of the room. "Hmm... Yeeesss... This is hers. It´s the only one we have at the moment".

I looked at the painting. It was quite small and and was in the same abstract style as the other ones in her apartment, the colors were different, but you could tell right away that it was her work.

"Do all her paintings look like this? I mean does she ever paint anything more realistic, like portraits or anything?"

"Cassie? Noo, never, not that I know of anyway. She only comes by and drops one off every once in a while. They sell pretty good though."

"Do you know anything about her background?" I asked, hoping to find some clue.

"Nope, she keeps a pretty low profile, I guess she just doesn´t want people snooping into her privacy."

"Well, thank you then," I sighed, "This wasn´t quite what I was looking for."

I went back to the car and took off for Jonathan's Galleries out at the Woodhill Mall.

Jonathan welcomed me enthusiastically. "Do I have any art by Cassandra Pandora? Of course! I have several Pandoras! She's a wonderful artist. Do you already have some of her work?"

"No, I only discovered her recently."

Jonathan pointed a long finger at a grouping of paintings. "Aren't these beautiful? This one is my favorite."

I recognized Cassie's bright abstract style. "She never paints realistically? No people in her paintings?"

"Not Cassie, but I represent some wonderful figurative painters. And I have some great landscapes. Let me show you something."

"No, Cassandra Pandora is my main interest. How well do you know her?"

His brow wrinkled. "Cassie? I like to think we are very good friends. I hope she does, too. Hahaha!"

"If she brought you a new painting with a figure on it, what would you think?"

"Cassie is an artist. I'll look at whatever she does. Why?"

Either he knew nothing about the mystery painting or he was good at covering up, but I trusted my intuition that he knew nothing about it. I stood looking at Cassie's paintings, my mind empty of ideas. Then a small one popped up. "Does Cassie sell a lot of paintings?"

"Oh yes! She has three local collectors who buy most of her paintings. Well, she did have three. Two now. Mr Heidel died just recently in a house fire."

"Heidel? Phillip Heidel?"

"Yes, did you know him?"

"Briefly. And he bought a lot of Cassie's paintings?"

"Oh yes! He always wanted to be the first to see her latest painting."

My mind was spinning. A connection to Phillip Heidel. The very strange Heidels. Martha and Henry and Granny and the frogs on the wall. "Where are the paintings that Phillip Heidel acquired?"

"I assume they are still in his house waiting for the estate to be settled in probate. He died in a fire at his brother's house."

"Yes, I know." I wasn't listening to him. I was thinking how to get into Phillip Heidel's house and get a look at those paintings. "Who will inherit the paintings?"

"Phillip Heidel had a son - Leonardo. Leo was away at school at the time of the fire, but I saw him at the funeral."

The last thing I wanted to do was go back to that house. I hadn´t yet gotten over all the weirdness that had been going on there. I knew though that if I was going to get anywhere with Cassandra´s case, I had to.

I pulled up into the driveway at Phillip Heidel´s house. Martha and Henry´s house next door was a pile of burnt debris. I wondered how long it would take for someone to start rebuilding it, and I wondered if anyone would ever want to live there if they knew the story of what had taken place.

I walked up to the, for me, now familiar door and rang the door bell.

It took several minutes before he opened. Leonardo Heidel.

Before me stood a stunning young man in his late twenties. His shoulder length dark brown wavy hair was framed around a pair of beautiful yellowish brown eyes, and a well groomed short beard helped to draw attention the most sparkling smile I had ever seen.

"And you are?" he said with a voice that almost knocked me off my feet.

I found myself stuttering. "I..I..I..my name is Alexandra Stevens, I´m a private investigator and I´m working on case involving an artist named Cassandra Pandora, and I understand that you might have some of her paintings."

"Yes, I have some here. Come on in!"

I was feeling extremely nervous. Since my husband died I had hardly looked at another man, let alone felt this way. He was at least five years younger than I was and I was finding it hard to concentrate on what I really was doing there.

"Mr Heidel, I will try to explain why I´m here as briefly as possible."

"I know why you are here," he said, smiling with those beautiful golden eyes.

"You do?"

"Yes, you're a private investigator. You were working for my Aunt Martha. My dad told me all about you."

"I'm sorry about his death."

Leo pushed back his long hair. "He and Uncle Henry were involved in some wild schemes - that whole "SLOMO" thing was pretty far out."

"I almost found out first hand."

"They were going to give you a SLOMO treatment? You should have seen what it did to Granny!"

I found Leo's good spirits a little disturbing considering that his father and Aunt and Uncle and Granny had all perished recently, but maybe in a way he was relieved that it was all over. "Have you ever heard of an artist named Cassandra Pandora?"

He blinked. "Didn't I just answer that question?"

My face was warm. It was foolish to get flustered by a good-looking man at my age, but what the heck WAS my age now? It occurred to me that my unwanted SLOMO treatment might have had some effect after all. "I'm sorry, Leo! I'm not usually so absent-minded."

He laughed. "It happens to everybody. Let's go upstairs. There are some Pandora paintings in dad's study."

Leo started walking up the steps. As I followed I couldn´t help watching him as he ascended. He walked with such confidence and grace. I told myself to take it easy and concentrate on the reason I was here, but it seemed impossible. I was infatuated by this man.

When we entered Philip´s study, Leo gracefully waved his hand across one of the walls. "Well, here they are." he said in that unbelievable voice.

There were 5 paintings in different sizes. "I believe these are all hers."

I walked up to wall to take a closer look. Yes these were undoubtably Cassie´s, her unmistakeable style had become quite familar to me now.

They were all abstacts, none of them had any sign of realism in them.

I turned back to Leo who was now standing just slightly behind me. His eye´s met mine and then he shot off one of those breathtaking smiles.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

-"No not really, I was looking for something a bit more realistic."

-"Well, as far as I know, she only paints abstracts."

Now Leo was standing dangerously close. My imagination started to run wild. OH GOD! Why was I feeling this way? What was it with this man?

I started to feel weak. I lost all memory of why I was there. The room seemed to disappear and all I could see was Leo´s eyes and that dazzling smile.

He lifted his hand towards his head, and in a seemingly unconcious gesture, ran is fingers through his long flowing hair....

I was immediatly jolted back to reality.

As his hair was being pulled back from his forehead, a chill went down my spine.

There on his left temple, was the same scar.

"That scar!" I whispered.

"This?" said Leo, touching the scar.

I could only shake my head. His eyes were locked to mine. He was very close to me, but the wall was behind me. "The scar disturbs you?"

I tried to recover a little self-control. "I just find it interesting, that's all." He was so very close now. Then he leaned forward and lightly kissed my lips. "I'll tell you all about it, if you like."

I kissed him back. "Yes," I murmured. "I like." His arms pulled me in and I put my arms around him. It was so good to feel warm and wanted again.

The telephone rang, but Leo only pulled me in closer. I gently pushed him away. "You better answer that. It might be important."

While Leonardo answered the phone, I tried to pull myself together. I was stunned by the effect this total stranger was having on me. But was he a stranger? For some reason, I felt as if I'd known him before, been kissed by him before.

I shook my head to clear my mind of those thoughts and stepped closer to Cassandra's paintings. From a distance, they seemed like all her other works, but up close, on one of them, there was...something...I couldn't tell what...in the lower left hand corner.

"What are you looking at so closely?" an amused voice sounded in my ears.

"Look at this, Leo!"

Leo leaned forward and looked at the small figure that had been painted into the lower left corner of the canvas. It was a man. A man who was looking out at the viewer and screaming.

"Hmmmm," said Leo, "I never noticed that before."

I was shivering. "Are you sure it was ever THERE before?"

"What do you mean?" he said, then, when he saw I was shivering, he hugged me close. "Hey, calm down. What are you so afraid of?"

"I don't know..." I tried to fight back my tears. "It's just so... I knew being a private investigator wouldn't be easy, but everything has been so strange and weird. I don't know what it's all about and it frightens me."

Leo stroked my hair. "Easy... easy... you're just feeling a little stressed today. You'll feel better..."

I did feel better with him holding me. I relaxed a little, just letting his strength hold me up. "Thanks, Leo."

He kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Listen, Alex. I'm going to be in town for the foreseeable future and I don't have all that much to do. Why don't you let me help you out with this mystery?"

"Oh, Leo, I couldn't pay you to help me. I could use an assistant, sure, but there is just no money in this business."

Leo laughed. "I'm not talking about money. I just want to help you. I like you. And I am going to be bored silly sitting around here. Helping you will make life much more interesting. Come on, you know you could use some help."

He was right about that. I smiled. "Okay, sure! If you want to... I really could use some help."

"Great! Why don't we take this painting with the little man in the corner over to Cassandra and see if she painted it that way?"

I laughed. "Good idea, Leo!"

"Should we take my car or yours?" I asked looking at him.
"Um...yours," Leo said looking at how my car was completely filling the space in the driveway. I giggle nervously looking at him and say "Ok." We both get into my car with Leo carrying the painting so we can ask Cassandra about it.

Cassandra opened the door to her apartment. She was wearing a paint-speckled smock and her hair was tied up in a scarf. I assumed she was painting. "Hi, Leo," she said.

I looked hard at Leo. "Why didn't you tell me you knew Cassandra?"

"I thought you knew," he said innocently enough, but I still didn't like it. It was odd that he wouldn't have told me back at his house when he showed me the painting.

Cassandra smiled. "Leo is my brother."

My mouth fell open. "What! Philip Heidel is your father?"

"No, no! Leo and I have the same mother but different fathers. I guess I should have said he is my step-brother."

"I'll want to hear more about that, but first..." I pushed the painting toward her. "Look at this. It was at Leo's house. It has a figure on it. Did you paint it that way?"

Her surprise seemed genuine. "No, I didn't!" She looked at me with wide eyes. "So now there are two of them!"

I was beginning to wonder if I was the victim of some kind of prank or hoax, but I had to assume the two of them were on the level.

"Let's sum up what we've got here," I said to Cassandra. "Two of your paintings with figures in them that you claim you didn't paint. The figures have little scars on their temples. You and your brother Leo have little scars on your temples. I'm curious about those scars. What are they? How did you get them?"

Cassandra and Leo exchanged uncomfortable looks, but didn't say anything at first. After a few seconds, Cassandra shrugged and said to Leo, "Go ahead and tell her, Leo. I suppose it has something to do with what's happening here."

Leo turned to me. "We got those scars from my father. He had a scar on his temple he'd gotten when he was a child, and he thought it'd be fitting if everyone in the family had the exact same scar in the same place. He was...strange."

"To say the least!" I exclaimed. I was dumbfounded. What did all this mean?

"So what did he do to give you those scars?" I ask looking at them both curiously. "It might give me an idea on what to do with the paintings."

Truth is, it might cure my curiosity on the matter, but maybe, I reasoned with myself, detectives are supposed to be curious and maybe my curiosity could help the case in some way. Remaining silent I let these thought shift themselves through my head as I watch Leo and Cassandra exchanging glances.

"Are you feeling alright?" Leo asked.

"What?" I said, "What do you mean?"

Leo shrugged. "You were just standing there staring at us. It looked like you were lost in thought. You know... daydreaming."

"I was just thinking... What were we talking about?"

Leo and Cassandra looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Cassandra smiled. "I don't know. Don't you remember?"

There was a tingling feeling in my fingertips. I held them up to my eyes, but saw nothing amiss. Was I coming down with something? Is this the way Bird Flu or Nile Fever or Lyme's Disease announced it's presence? With odd tingling feelings, mental vagueness...

"Are you sure you're okay?" Cassandra asked. "Maybe you should lie down for a moment?"

I started to reassure her that I was fine but the room was spinning and sparkly colors filled my vision, then blackness.

...

I was lying on a bed. Was this Cassandra's bedroom? I must have fainted. I could hear Leo and Cassandra talking in the kitchen.

"...think she suspects?... ...later we can fix... ...why did you... ...shhh, I think she's awake now."

I was a bit dizzy. My legs were weak and my head was spinning. After 3 tries I was able to get out of the bed and stumble towards the voices in the kitchen. The kitchen door was slightly ajar, so I put one of my unfocused eyes in the crack just to see a blurry vision of Leo and Cassandra, sitting opposite eachother at the kitchen table.

To my dismay, I noticed that they both had a claw on their index fingers, and were scratching their temples as if to think.

Leo´s scratching was not as intense as Cassandras but was bleeding. Cassandra was digging into the crevice that looked like a slot in the side of her head. She wasen´t bleeding though.

She looked at Leo and said: "How can we ever explain this?"

Leo wasn't too happy. "Well, Cassandra, you should have thought about that before you called in a private detective! What were you thinking? Because of all this, our family is dead now."

"You can't lay that at my door! I didn't ask Uncle Heidel to start playing around with SloMo!"

"Maybe not, but you didn't mind it very much, now did you?"

Cassandra flushed and buried her face into her hands. "That's cruel, Leo. You don't need to remind me of that."

"What is it that Leo shouldn't remind you of?" I ask from the doorway as I had just heard the last part of the conversation. "What is the deal with the claws?"

Leo and Cassandra looked up like small children caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Leo grinned. "Claws? What claws? Are you still feeling groggy?"

I WAS feeling groggy, but I was also sure that I had seen claws. "What are those scars on your temples? I want to know right now. If you expect me to solve this mystery, then I need information and I think you are withholding information."

Leo smiled his charming smile, but my eyes had been opened and I wasn't falling for his charm again. "Alex," Leo said, "The scars are from a childhood injury. Nothing to get excited about."

"But why would you BOTH have them? What kind of accident would injure both of you in exactly the same place?"

"And why does that guy in the painting have one too? And who is he? It´s about time the two of you came clean, and started telling the truth!"

Cassandra smiled. "Are you sure you can handle the truth?"

I just looked at her. "That's my job -- discovering the truth. Of course I can handle it."

"Well..." Cassandra said, "It's an unusual story... Please hold your questions until I finish. You see... Leo and I are lizard people."

I was immediately skeptical and opened my mouth to say so, but Cassandra held up her hand. "Uh uh uh! No questions until I'm finished."

I settled back to hear her story.

Cassandra's Story

Many eons ago Earth had a sister planet called Aquaria. Aquaria was all water, just one big ocean, although there were a lot of small islands scattered around. Earth at that time was completely dry, a desert. Both planets orbited the sun in the same track but spaced 180 degrees apart so that everything was balanced and they would not collide with each other.

There were people on Aquaria - the Aquarians -- but no people on desert Earth, of course. The Aquarians developed into an advanced culture and eventually built spaceships and visited Earth. "What a dump!" they said and decided to use Earth for a garbage dump since Aquaria was getting very crowded.

Over the centuries all kinds of Aquarian garbage piled up on Earth and also a few Aquarians lived there. These Aquarians were criminals who had escaped Aquarian justice by hiding out on Earth. Their descendants became the first Earth people.

One day a large comet came zipping through the solar system and disturbed the balance. Aquarian scientists realized that eventually Earth and Aquaria would collide with each other. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the only thing they could think of was to build a lot of spaceships and fly to another solar system.

Many Aquarians escaped the Big Crash when the two planets collided but most of the rest perished. The Big Crash merged Aquaria and Earth into a new planet with a moon. This new Earth had deserts and also oceans and also a few people.

I interrupt Cassandra's story

"But why were they LIZARD people?"

"They weren't," said Cassandra. "Didn't I tell you to hold your questions until the end of my story?"

"Yes," I said, "but I am not seeing how you and Leo fit into this science fiction tale you are telling me."

"It's not fiction," Cassandra said. "It's what happened."

"Riiiight... And so why doesn't anybody today know about all that Aquaria and the Big Crash stuff except you guys?"

I looked over at Leo expecting him to say something about this, but he just sat there with a blank stare on his face picking at his scar.

All of a sudden Cassandra went quiet too.

"Weeeeeell..." I said, " Are you going to tell me or not?"

Neither one of them said a word.

I decided to call it a day and told them that I´d be back and talk to them tomorrow. I said goodbye, but they didn´t answer me.

On my way home I started to seriously doubt their sanity. This made me realize that I haden´t really done any thorough background check on either of them.

Well back at my apartment I sat myself in front of the computor. With the thought that they might really be insane in mind I started to check their names to see if they had any connection to any mental institutions.

When I was just about to give up, there it was.

The Shady Old Tree Hospital For the Extremely insane.

I wrote down the adress.

I was beginning to think maybe I should just give this case up. There's no doubt it was getting far out there, and as attractive as Leo was, I really didn't feel like marrying an insane lizard person from another planet.

But Leo really was cute. Maybe I should do some more research before being too rash.

The Shady Old Tree Hospital For The Extremely Insane was a rambling collection of buildings, some brick, some wood. The administration building said 1898, so the place must have been at least a hundred years old.

Inside the admin building I was greeted by a receptionist who wore her hair in a bun, a big whole-wheat hoagie roll. I wondered if they used patients to help out the staff. But she seemed sane enough when she looked up and said, "Hi! May I help you?"

"I'm looking for someone who can give me some information about some patients."

She reached up and patted her bun. "I'm sorry, but all our records are confidential."

"This is police business."

"Are you a policewoman?"

"I'm a private investigator." I flipped open my ID for her.

"I see... Well, I'll call Mr Blosky. Maybe he can help you."

Mr Blosky was a small man with a little gray moustache and twinkly gray eyes. "Alexandra Stevens, Private Investigator," he read from my ID, then handed it back to me. "So you aren't an official detective, just a freelancer? I'm sorry. There's nothing I can tell you about any of our patients."

"Not even Leo and Cassandra?"

His reaction was stronger than I could have imagined. He looked like he had been hit in the gut. "You've seen them?" His eyes were wide.

"Yes. I'm working for Cassandra on a case, but there seems to be something strange about both her and Leo."

His lips trembled. "Strange? Strange? Yes... I guess you could say it was strange..."

I took out my writing pad and pen. "Well? Let's hear it."

Mr. Blosky didn't answer right away; he seemed lost in his own remembrances. Finally, he shook his head as if he was clearing his thoughts and then turned to look me in the eye.

"Cassandra and Leo are compulsive liars. They were sent here when they confessed to crimes they couldn't possibly have committed."

"What crimes?"

"Oh! All kinds of things. Like the assassination of President Lincoln, burying Jimmy Hoffa in a coal mine worked by Loretta Lynn's father, and for Cassandra, being the Woman in White who always visited Edgar Allan Poe's grave."

"Hmmm. Did they ever claim to be aliens from another planet?"

His eyes widened in shock again. "They told you that?" he gasped. His hands were shaking again as he reached for a glass of water.

I was suspicious. Something about him just didn't make any sense. Why would he be so shocked by anything Leo and Cassandra said, if they truly were compulsive liars?

"Mr. Blosky," I began.

"No!" he exclaimed. "No more! I shouldn't have even told you this much. I think you should leave now."

As I passed through the door on my way out, I looked back over my shoulder at Mr. Blosky. He had snatched up his phone and was busy dialing. He glared at me, so I stopped dawdling and hurried away.

Maybe there was some more about Cassandra and Leo that could be found if only I did a little more searching around. I decided to head back to Cassandra's place, maybe there would be some more clues as to what they did during their lives, maybe if I could just find some paperwork or something, there would be a possibility of finding out more information.

"Hi Alexandra, we were just about to step out!" Cassandra said as she and Leo were locking the front door. "Please, I just want another look at those paintings, maybe I could find some more information for you," I said looking at her pleadingly.
"Ok fine, here's the key, we'll be back in about an hour," Leo said.
"Are you sure you...." Leo stabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. "Go ahead."

I walked into the front room and waited until I had safely heard the car leave. Then I started looking around the appartment, drawers, cabinets, anything that might hold a clue. I found an old photo album fairly quickly which I found interesting and put on the kitchen table intending on looking at it later and continued hunting around for any paperwork.

Maybe the photo album would have something which had a name, like a picture of The Shady Old Hospital from the front where it's name could be seen, or a school they went to in their youth or something, anything that could lead to a hint of unravelling their past.

The chest of drawers in Cassandra's bedroom turned out to be a gold mine of possible clues. There were boxes full of old newspaper clippings, photographs, receipts, menus, programs, pamphlets , letters, leaflets...

I spread out my finds on the kitchen table and started putting things in piles. Any newspaper clipping that mentioned Cassandra's name went in one pile. Another pile for the other clippings. Same for the photos and other items. Soon I had a stack of paper that dealt specifically with Cassandra and a stack that didn't.

Most of the Cassandra things were about her art career and I could understand her saving them. Of more interest to me were the other clippings and photos. I made another stack of Leo-related items. Nothing unusual there, just items about his school and childhood. But leftover from my sorting was a small stack of things that were not about Cassandra or Leo. I thumbed through it, looking for patterns.

At first glance, they all seemed to be unrelated items, but sure enough, a pattern began to emerge. For one thing, there were three clippings about UFO sightings. I set those aside as the 'alien visitors' hypothesis. There were several clippings about events in a small town in Texas -- Wayback,Texas -- and I set those aside as the 'rural psycho' hypothesis. Then there were about a dozen photos of a sad-looking circus clown, all black & white photos from the 1940's. I set those aside as the 'freak clown relative' hypothesis.

Eventually, I had six piles and six hypotheses. When I discovered an old photo of the clown out of make-up and inscribed on the back with 'GrandDad' then the 'freak clown relative' theory became the 'freak clown grandfather' theory. I listed my six theories on my notepad:

freak clown grandfather,
alien visitor,
rural psycho,
prankster,
publicity-seeker,
something else,

I felt good. Now I had theories to work with. You can't solve a case without theories... and I had six of them! What a detective I was becoming! Time for a cold beer... or maybe six of them! Maybe six was my new lucky number? Life was looking fine.

I gathered all my loot into a big cardboard box and put it in my car, then left a note for Cassandra explaining that I had to take a few of her papers to help me with her case.

I spent the rest of the evening going through the papers again. I started to get the feeling that all of these theories were somehow connected with each other. I knew there was something that I was missing that would put them all into perspective.

I was pretty sure that the clown played a major part in all of this, so I decided to focus my attention on him.

I took out a magnifying glass and started studying the pictures more closely. I found nothing unusual about the ones with the clown in his make-up. He looked like a regular old clown. I never did like clowns, but that was beside the point.

On the other hand, after viewing the picture of him without the make-up I found something.

He was wearing a pin striped suit. He had the same scar. It was the man in Cassandra's painting.

Though I knew that I had found a major clue, I still didn´t know what it meant.

I was getting very tired and decided to go to bed. I would have to continue trying to figure this out tomorrow.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by something. A kind of shuffling sound. When I opened my eyes I realized to my utter horror that I was totally paralyzed. The only thing I could move were my eyes.

The room was bathed in an eerie blue light and I could hear strange voices whispering in a hissing kind of way.

"I TOLD you you shouldn´t have given her the key. Now she´s going to figure it out. What are we going to do now?"

I was stuck to the bed and vulnerable and becoming more than just a little bit scared.

Into my bedroom came the sound of shuffling feet. They stood behind my head where I couldn't see them. The strange hissing voices spoke again. "Isss she awake?"

"Yesss, she isss only paralyzed, not dead."

"Thisss isss a fine messs you have got usss in."

"It isss not entirely my fault."

"No?"

"No! I told Cassandra there would be odd effectsss on her paintingsss because of the transfer between dimensionsss and then what doesss she do but panic asss soon asss something odd happensss?"

"Grandfather will be dissspleased."

"That evil clown? He can ssstay out there in Wayback, Texassss and rot for all I care."

Why did these people ask me to be on a case when they already knew that weird things were going to happen? What kind of strangeness have I gotten myself into? Did my husband have to go through things this weird? I lay there wondering what my next move should be...if I could move...?

"We mussst get rid of thisss nosey detective lady."

"No! Too many have died already."

"Too many? What doesss that mean? They are humansss, not Reptiliodsss. Better that a million of them should die than one of usss."

"Your viewsss have alwaysss been extreme. The sssupreme council woiuld not approve."

"To the Bad Place with the sssupreme council!"

"No! I will not be part of anything that violatesss the code of the sssupreme council!"

"You little sssisssy!"

"Take that back!"

"No! I'll fight you right now... Sssisssy!"

"Why you..."

I heard a punch and wished I could see what was going on, but lying on my back on the bed and being paralyzed gave me a view of nothing but the ceiling. The sound of the struggle filled the room with slaps and hisses. Someone bumped the bed.

What were these creatures? They called themselves Reptiliods. Was that bizarre story that Cassandra and Leo told me about Lizard People actually true? It seemed too incredible. Maybe I was hallucinating or dreaming... Did I go crazy somewhere along the way? Do crazy people even know they are crazy? I repressed an urge to laugh like a maniac.

Many things went through my head while I was lying there... mostly how to get the hell away from there!

I must have fallen asleep in the middle of all this insanity.

When I woke up, I turned my head and glanced at the alarm clock on the table by my bed. It was 7.11 AM. I had a splitting headache, and was trying to remember what had happened the night before.

I was thinking that this must all have been a dream.

It didn´t make sense.

Why otherwise would I have suddenly been paralyzed, and thought I heard Cassandra and Leo talking to each other by my bed in reptilioid voices, only for them to be changed into reptiliods, whatever those were?

This couldn´t be real. Either it was a dream, or it had something to do with a warp in the dimension transfer process, that these unknown reptiliods, who I was uncertain about even existing, were talking about.

I dragged myself out of bed, and took an aspirin.

I felt sluggish, but I dragged myself into the bathroom and took a hot shower. As I was toweling my head dry I saw myself in the bathroom mirror and screamed. Were those scales on my skin? No. Whew! Just a brief hallucination. Ever since that Slo-Mo experience my mind just didn't seem to be functioning normally.

I got dressed in jeans and a shirt and sat down to breakfast. I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting about something, that I was overlooking something important, but what?

Oh well, if it was that important I would think about it sooner or later. I sipped on my coffee and gazed out the window at the grass and trees. The world was a peaceful place.

Peaceful and relaxing. I turned around and turned on the radio, just so that I could at least hear some sound of sane civilisation there. Sipping my coffee and putting on some french toast for breakfast..mmm..french toast.

BAM! BAM! BAM! All of a sudden there was a pounding at my door that made me drop my coffee in my lap.

"Alexandra Stevens? This is the police, we know you´re in there, open up or we´ll break the door down!"

I grabbed a T-shirt and quickly wiped up some of the coffee from my lap, hurried to the the door and opened it.

Before I could say anything, I was grabbed and shoved up against a wall, by a huge blond policeman who slightly resembled Dolph Lundgren.

He pulled my arms behind me and handcuffed them.

He said: "Alexandra Stevens, you are being charged with the murder of Cassandra Pandora. You have the right to remain silent....."

My head was spinning. "WHAT???!!!!" I screamed.

She was found dead this morning, and your DNA was all over her.

"My DNA? What are you talking about? I don't have any DNA. I'm a woman."

The officer frowned. "Um, M'am, both genders have DNA. DNA is a biological component of every cell of the body. It's in blood and saliva, for example."

I couldn't believe it. "So what are you saying? My saliva was all over Cassandra Pandora?"

"No, M'am. We believe it was tears."

I was perplexed, I went totally nuts and started screaming at the officer.

"What are you TALKING about??? I didn´t even know she was dead for God´s sake!!! So now you´re telling me that I killed her and then started crying all over her??? How did she die? TELL ME!!"

The officer was not impressed by my little outburst and said, "Sorry M´am, that´s confidential information."

I was starting to feel sick.

All I could say was: "OK, I want a lawyer".