I could tell she was trouble the moment she walked into my office.
It was a warm April afternoon, and the time was two minutes past five. With my feet on the desk and a glass of Bourbon in my hand, I was sitting back in my swivel chair wondering how I'd manage to pay the rent, let alone Polly's wages. I did that a lot: business had been slow for weeks. Months, maybe. Sometimes it even felt like I hadn't had a case in years, or centuries. Outside the window, a couple of ballooncars were hovering. I recognised one. It belonged to the local debt collectors, and to my way of thinking it was hanging around my office like a pterodactyl circling a dying aurochs.
Then she walked in. She wasn't much to look at: pint-sized, blue, dressed not much different from any other Mikorian I'd seen. But comparing her to everyone else I'd seen that day was like comparing a panther to housecats. You don't last long as a private detective if you can't spot trouble coming your way – and this chick was trouble with a capital everything.
"Mr Delaware-Three?" she asked.
"Delaware the Third," I said.
"Oh, so there aren't two more of you elsewhere in the building?" Her voice hadn't been what I expected; she'd sounded like a society hostess wondering if I'd make up the numbers at some garden party, and certainly not like she wanted me for anything important. For a moment I wondered if she wanted me to find some missing pooch, and I started to get my speech together about how the Delaware Detective Agency doesn't do lost dogs -- unless the money's right, of course. But then she spoke again, and I realised there was more to this thing after all.
"There's someone I want you to find."
I took my feet off the desk and leaned forward. "Take a seat. Now, Miss...?"
"Just call me Fred." She sat down, facing me across my desk, and looked at the litter of papers. "I hope I'm not distracting you from more important business."
"It'll keep," I said. "Who's this person you're looking for?"
She shrugged. "That's the trouble. I can't describe him. Or her."
"You mean you've never seen them?" It was possible, I supposed. "You mean there's a gang or something that's got a down on you, but you don't know who the guy at the top is. Something like that?"
"Not quite. I'm pretty sure I've met them. At least, I can deduce that I must have done. But try as I might, there's hardly anything I can remember about them. Just a feeling of missing time." She glanced at the wall clock. "Of course, you probably wouldn't feel even that. You can't miss what you've never had, can you?"
I looked at the clock, but I couldn't spot anything wrong. Two minutes past five, just like it should be.
"See here, lady," I said. "What you've told me isn't a case, and I can't take it on. I'd just be wasting your time and mine."
"You don't have any to waste," she said. She didn't say it like it was a threat, just a casual statement of fact.
"That's as maybe." I sat back and studied her, trying to work out if she was in her right mind. Problem is, when someone's a blue alien the size of a nine-year-old, it's not easy to tell what they're supposed to behave like in the first place. "Are you sure you shouldn't be seeing a doctor?"
She hid it well, but I was sure I'd got through to her then. Her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair.
"Quite sure," she said.
I poured out another slug of Bourbon. "So what d'you want me to do? Apart from find someone you can't remember if you've met or not?"
"Well, that's the thing. I'm pretty sure there's someone else mixed up in all this. A woman with an eyepatch. I saw her just before I met... whoever it was."
