Travels and Travails of a Certified Grouch

Adam Dumphy

Description

When is a kidnap not a kidnap or a train robbery not a train robbery? How does one prove paternity when conception occurred sixty years earlier on an Indian reservation with limited written records? How nearly can the human mind produce total recall if carefully questioned? How does one dispose of unwanted ill-gotten gains and remain under the radar of the IRS?

Dr. Thomas McDuff has to untangle each of these puzzles.

A retired physician and widowed he is the Certified Grouch of this series. Since his wife passed away he doesn’t really care about anything very much. He actively dislikes other doctors, hospitals and Medical Schools. Add to the list: big cities, noisy crowds, short skirts, Linnaean taxonomy, anything cooked in olive oil or flavored with paprika. Almost anything can arouse his ire.

            Unfortunately for the good doctor a little gray man in a little gray office in the large gray building in the gray atmosphere of San Francisco knows his weakness, contention. If told firmly that the doctor cannot solve some puzzle his answer is “Any scheme devised by one man’s mind can be penetrated by another’s.” And the old man will attack the problem forthwith.

            McDuff also does not know that the grey man’s sign on the gray door of his gray office says, “Intercontinental Floral Transport Company”. And that it has little to do with flowers except an occasional funeral wreath. In addition he does not know that the old doctor’s efforts, at no expense to the Company, reduces its dependence on ‘endowments’ from a very luxurious office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Suspense
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781467827362
• Langue: English

Extrait

Travels and Travails of a Certified Grouch
 
 
 
 
Adam Dumphy
 
 
 

 
 
 
AuthorHouse™
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.
500 Avebury Boulevard
Central Milton Keynes, MK9 2BE
www.authorhouse.co.uk
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
© 2007 Adam Dumphy. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
First published by AuthorHouse 6/12/2007
 
 
I SBN: 978-1-4259-9536-2 (sc)
I SBN: 978-1-4678-2736-2 (ebk)
 
 
Printed in the United States of America
Bloomington, Indiana
 
 
 
 
 
Contents
An Exercise in Memory Chapter 1  
Chapter 2  
Chapter 3  
Chapter 4  
Chapter 5  
Chapter 6  
Chapter 7  
Chapter 8  
Chapter 9  
Chapter 10  
Chapter 11  
Chapter 12  
Chapter 13  
Chapter 14  
Chapter 15  
Chapter 16  
Chapter 17  
Kidnap? Or Kidnap! Chapter 1  
Chapter 2  
Chapter 3  
Chapter 4  
Chapter 5  
Chapter 6  
Chapter 7  
Chapter 8  
Chapter 9  
Chapter 10  
Chapter 11  
Chapter 12  
Chapter 13  
Chapter 14  
Chapter 15  
Chapter 16  
Chapter 17  
The Poor Little Thing. Chapter 1  
Chapter 2  
Chapter 3  
Chapter 4  
Chapter 5  
Chapter 6  
Chapter 7  
Chapter 8  
Chapter 9  
Chapter 10  
Chapter 11  
Chapter 12  
Chapter 13  
Chapter 14  
Chapter 15  
Chapter 16  
Chapter 17  
Chapter 18  
About the Author:  
 
 
 
 
 
To
Mair
My beautiful and dutiful daughter.
 
 
 
A Trilogy Consisting of
 
An Exercise in Memory
Kidnap? Or Kidnap!
The Poor Little Thing
 
An Exercise in Memory Chapter 1  
The prop driven Cessna 220 which had been dawdling through pure white thunderheads in an evening sky of orange then purple then black now emerged from between two mountain peaks surrounding a small valley. It side slipped twice to reduce speed and with a quarter turn and without even scouting the site for obstructions bumped to a landing on a rough auxiliary landing field.
The side door opened before the plane was stopped. Two suitcases, a pack and assorted bundles were unceremoniously deposited on the ground and the plane taxied in a circle and took off without ever losing its forward motion.
Within a moment only the desert-intense silence prevailed and there was not the slightest sign of activity for ten minutes about the strip. Then a blue sedan, which had been parked in the shade of two smoke trees, pulled onto the field and approached the luggage. A short, stocky man emerged, looked about him in some degree of quandary and then stored the paraphernalia in the car trunk.
“That’s the plane right enough and on time. And that’s his stuff. But where in the hell is that wily old bird?”
Up close he was a powerful man as equal in span from side to side as from front to back or from cowlick to boot tips for that matter. He wore a neat polyester blue suit, white shirt and bolo tie. A small horseshoe shaped belt buckle and sharp pointed western boots revealed his natural habitat. And a certain squareness to his shoulders and neck, and an indefinable certainty of his manner demarked his profession.
The quandary unanswered and no other man, beast or bundle being in sight he climbed back into the sedan and drove slowly along the rough track at the side of the field.
Bumping back to the County road he slowed and then stopped as a tall, gaunt old man appeared in the road ahead. He was carrying a light pack and using a long walking stick and was easily recognizable as his form and walk were distinctive. The form so tall and thin, the walk being so slow and seemingly hesitant as to appear that any step might be his last but with such a long stride that he covered the ground rapidly.
“That’s him. Old Grumpy Bear in person. And I should have known he’d never do anything the way you’d expect. He just seems to think different from the rest of us.”
The Sheriff paused then added. “And I guess that ain’t bad. That’s why I called him in.”
The two men met at roadside.
“I’m Cleve, Dr. McDuff. I appreciate your coming.”
“Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”
“You don’t remember me but I watched you work the Mansfield case two years ago.”
“I remember you well but somehow only as Bucky. I certainly should remember a man powerful enough to hold my weight on his shoulders for ten minutes and good-natured enough to not mind a frowsty sweat sock in his face while I tried to climb over the outside wall of the Carmelite Monastery in Jacinto, Mexico. Sheriff of McKitchen County now I hear.”
“Yes if you can believe it. I still can’t. You must have been making inquiries then?”
“I have and you have a very good reputation, Sheriff or I wouldn’t have come. If you had just wired, ‘Bucky needs you.’ I wouldn’t have to have made those phone calls.”
“What ever the reason I am grateful you came. It’s something a little out of the ordinary here. At least for us. We are used to some trucker kipin’ some stock for the market at Taos, or a couple of cowhands who clean out a bar in sheer good spirits, or some city boy with his first cowboy boots who wants to stick up a hick town bank. But this is out of our line.”
“Any mention of it in the papers?” The old man’s face and tone assumed the gloom that had earned him his nickname.
The Sheriff who knew of the old man’s fetish for anonymity answered the unspoken question. “This is a rented car for your use. And my only confidant since calling you in, is my wife who is still wondering why she had to rent a car for a mythical sister. And she is waiting just down the road a bit to make me take her out to dinner for doing me the favor.”
“Very good, Sheriff. She deserves it.” The old man’s little smile broke through his gloom and for a moment there was the warmth about him which made people, some people at least insist, on his normality.
The shorter man continued. “I am pretty well known in the County so I thought we might have a talk out here somewhere where we wouldn’t be seen together.”
“Better and better, Sheriff.”
“Climb in Doc and….”
“Why don’t you climb out and we can sit in the shade of this,” he paused and looking at the tree producing the shade closely continued, “Sonoran Plateau sub species of the Western Hemlock.”
It was just a common cottonwood but to Bucky that further identified the old man. Bucky remembered that the doctor was in constant contention with authorities on the Sonoran flora over the nomenclature of some tree or bush or other that no one else had ever heard of. And that most authorities disagreed with him totally and his only authority was Indian legend. And he was also known for always wandering off looking for some kind of goofy Cypress
“What the hell,” thought the younger man, “what difference does it make. A tree is a tree as far a shade is concerned.”
Then came another thought. “Or does he think I’ve got the car bugged or a secret agent in the trunk?”
That overweening demand for security had been the joke of the camp at Cerro Gordo. There was a rumor that there was a reward for his death from some leftist group in Mexico. If true he must have been up to something pretty heavy down there. Those leftist bandidos in Mexico did not give their money away that easily. Still one of the guides insisted he had seen the old man’s back pack with a bullet hole through it and all the contents smashed. Who could know?
“Not here, Sheriff. Over there.” He smiled that rare smile again. “I hitch hiked the last 200 miles in a Mexican fish truck. You better stay up wind of me.”
Cleve was suddenly aware of the truth of this and something more. He had been caught off base again in a lesson he should know by now. The old man’s actions were at times bizarre but there was usually a good reason for them, or two or three good reasons. And he must have shown his embarrassment as the old man continued in a pleasant tone.
“Awfully nice fellow, Alfredo, but a wild driver. And he had just bought a new ocarina. You know a whistle made out of a gourd. Did you ever listen to four hours of ocarina music? Especially when there was only one hand on the steering wheel and only half the tone holes were open?”
Cleave laughed at this, more because he doubted the exact truth of the story and suspecting it was used more to relieve his embarrassment than to amuse.
The Sheriff had his facts in order and counted them off on his fingers as he spoke. “Mrs. Katherine Grant is about the finest lady in the County or even the South West for that matter. She operates a trade mart at Valverde and runs just about every church or charity or society affair personally on the side. When there is a job needs doing she responds. An’ anybody sick or broke or just lonely she babies them and nurses them and even grubstakes them. Or when she is broke, as is not infrequent, she browbeats somebody else into doing it.
“Early thirties now, she grew up dirt poor on a homestead in the Valley. Mother died young. Old man the nicest guy in the world but all broken up by a half broke, saddle bronc once, and then broken up at the loss of his young wife secondly, so pretty well crippled most of the time in one way or the other. I wouldn’t say he didn’t maybe like the panther juice a little b