Silas Sharp and the Case of the Missing Tuesday: Chapter 3

                                                                                         

CHAPTER 3: THE GIRL WITH THE LAVENDER GUN

The pistol in her hand wasn’t the kind they show off in action movies. It looked like something a quiet aunt kept in her knitting basket, just in case the neighbor’s time-traveling macaw came sniffing around again. Efficient. Boring. Real. She stood framed by the cheap doorway, backlit by a flickering bulb that hadn’t been replaced since the Obama administration.

“Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want with Randy?”

“Look,” I said, hands half-raised. “I’m not here to rob Randy’s stuff. I’m here to rob him of the illusion he’s created. The box told me things he wouldn’t.”

“I see Daisy’s out of the bag,” she said. Her eyes moved to the open cardboard box on the bed—harness, leash, a chewed-up cactus toy, a few faded Polaroids of a man and a dog on various porches.

“Daisy?”

“The dog.” She nodded toward the box. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t solve missing or dead pet cases, ” I said, rising from the edge of the bed, hands still visible. “I solve the stuff that gnaws at you when no one else is looking.”

“Jesus,” she muttered with the contempt one usually reserves for telemarketers. “You’re one of those.”

“One of those what?”

“A metaphysical detective,” she said. “You all talk in riddles.” She lowered her pistol but didn’t pocket it. Trust issues, I guess. She walked away from the bedroom with the kind of sway one normally associates with a metronome. She stood in the tiny patch of apartment Randy called his living room.

“What’s your connection with our Tuesday skipper?” I asked.

She blinked once. Then tucked the pistol into the waistband of her slouchy corduroy trousers. “Dr. Calico Verde. No relation to the pepper, the color, or the cat. Though I do claw when cornered.”

“Silas Sharp,” I said. “Metaphysical detective. I don’t find people. I find reality. I also enjoy quiet walks on the beach and the music of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. What exactly is your profession, Doctor Verde?”

“I specialize in trauma extraction,” she said. “I provide customized psycho-olfactory solutions for those who wish to forget—or, more accurately, suppress—specific mental events.”

“Now who’s talking riddles?”

“My work is accredited across several dimensions,” she bragged.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Essential oils, guided meditations, and a proprietary playlist featuring moody synths and woodland chimes.”

She smiled, patient. “Also a degree in neurochemical limbic therapy and a weekend license from the Orphic College of Dream Hygiene.”

Dr. Calico Verde sat in the only chair in Randy’s living room. She crossed her legs. Rather, they seemed to cross of their own volition, as if they possessed their own free will. I offered her a cigarette but she declined. The room got quieter. I could hear the distant rattle of ice in someone else’s motel cup, or maybe time shaking itself loose.

I gave a low whistle. “I’m guessing Randy came to you because he wanted to forget the worst Tuesday of his life.”

“That’s a good guess.”

“I’m also good at Password,” I said, lighting up a cigarette and taking the kind of drag often associated with smoking in front of mysterious dames. “What was his problem?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “Client/doctor privilege and all.”

“I’ll just keep guessing, then.” I walked toward the window and pulled back the curtain just enough to peek out. Still no Randy. Just the sodium-orange glow of the parking lot, where the shadows loitered like underpaid extras. “Obviously, something bad happened on a Tuesday. So, I’m thinking you did some kind of memory thing. Wiped the day away or something. Am I hot or cold?”

“I didn’t wipe the day,” she said from behind me, her tone a tad defensive. Must’ve struck a nerve “That’s not how it works. He still lives it. He just doesn’t register it. His body shows up, clocks in, pays bills, drinks coffee. But his mind skips like a scratched record.”

“And the lavender?” I asked.

“It’s the catalyst. A few drops in a diffuser and Randy is free of Tuesdays.” She stood and slinked her way to the window. “What’s your next guess, detective?”

“The box,” I said, not looking at her. “The one with the dog stuff. Daisy was his dog.”

Her eyes softened. “She was his constant companion. Man’s best friend and all. Then she got sick and Randy had to make a tough decision. Took her to the vet on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“So he lives in a loop,” I said. “All days accounted for… except the one that took her.”

She nodded. “He tells people he doesn’t like Tuesdays. But it’s more like he owes Tuesday money.”

I walked back to the bedroom, the box of Daisy’s belongings resting on the crisply made bed. There was something tragic about how worn the harness was—faded, frayed at the edges. Loved.

“You’re not the villain here, Dr. Verde,” I said, “but you’re not off the hook either. You gave him the tools to forget—but forgetting isn’t harmless.”

Her brow creased. “He’s just skipping a day. It’s not like he’s hurting anyone.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” I stood, straightened my coat. “You ever heard of Temporal Drag? Thought not. Happens when one person exits a day the rest of us still have to live. It’s like a weak floorboard in time. Eventually, someone’s gonna fall through.”

She blinked. “You’re suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you: skipping Tuesdays creates metaphysical turbulence. Patterns get disrupted. Mail doesn’t arrive. Ideas stall in the birth canal. Whole portions of the universe wait for a man who isn’t coming. The last time someone skipped a day for more than six months, we lost Pluto.”

“I thought that was a scientific reclassification.”

“Sure,” I said, taking one final drag from my cigarette. “That’s what they tell you.”

She looked at the box, then back at me. “So you’re saying Randy’s grief is causing… planetary instability?”

“I’m saying Randy’s absence on Tuesdays is creating a narrative dissonance so loud it summoned me. I don’t get involved in people’s personal tragedies, Dr. Verde. Not unless they’re echoing.”

A beat.

She said, “You talk like a man who once lost a day of his own.”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I walked to the door. “I’m going to find Randy. And I’m going to remind him what Tuesdays are for.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” she said. “Randy won’t trust you but he’ll talk to me.”

________________

Outside, the air was that brand of Midwestern dusk where the sky looks overexposed and the clouds hang like forgotten groceries. I lit another cigarette and wondered whether people judge me for the habit.

Dr. Verde and I reach my red Pontiac Ventura—1967, bad suspension, decent morals—sat patiently in the parking lot like a bloodhound waiting for instructions. I’d barely turned the key when the radio hissed on unprompted.

—reports continue out of Buckhollow County where, for the third straight week, an entire elementary school has failed to acknowledge the existence of Tuesday. Teachers blame scheduling software. Parents blame fluoride. Superintendent Dr. Henry Klamm—who insists the students “still receive five full days of instruction” despite only attending four—was unavailable for comment due to his weekly nap, which he now takes every Tuesday. In unrelated news, scientists have detected faint tremors in the vicinity of—

I shut the radio off. Dr. Calico Verde softly whispers with dread.

“Tremors?”

Time doesn’t always crack like a mirror. Sometimes it shudders—low, quiet, like something waking up under the floorboards. A skipped Tuesday here. A missing dog there. Then tremors. Then something worse.

I pulled out of the lot and headed east. I had questions for a man who didn’t believe in Tuesdays. And I needed answers for a universe that did.