John Weagly

I was parked at the corner of Clark and Ridge, sitting in my car in the middle of the night, listening to the Tom Waits album Blue Valentine.  I was watching room 118 of the Heart O’ Chicago motel, a dump in the Windy City’s Edgewater neighborhood.  It was a two-level motor lodge leftover from the 1950’s that had a solid two-star rating, and offered a free continental breakfast to make up for the fact that you might get eaten alive by bedbugs.  It was the perfect spot for a not-quite romantic rendezvous or if you wanted a seedy place to try heroin for the first time.

I was on yet another bad marriage case.  That morning, Mrs. Eleanor Arquette came into my office, said “I think my husband’s cheating on me” and hired me to get proof.  She looked to be in her late-twenties and, from what I could tell, was put together by an artist – long black hair, nice clothes, enticing perfume; a cool slick style that exuded confidence.  I didn’t see why anyone would want to cheat on her, but what did I know, I hadn’t been on a date since the Cubs won the World Series.

She told me the usual story about mysterious phone calls and her husband coming home at weird hours.  She gave me a picture of her hubby, Harvey Arquette, and I wrote down details about his schedule and his car and other stuff us private eyes need to know to follow someone, and then I went to work.

I started trailing Harvey late that afternoon as he was leaving his job at Big Jones, a Cajun restaurant where he worked as a waiter.  He drove to a two-flat in Portage Park and picked up a tall blonde woman dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.  The two of them then drove up to Evanston and stopped in at a bookstore called “Quill & Scroll,” before a leisurely dinner at a place called “The Peckish Pig.”  After dessert they drove to “Dave’s Rock Shop.”  

I assumed, judging by the lights being off and the street being deserted, that Dave’s was closed, but they went in so then I assumed that it wasn’t.  I guess Dave liked it dark. After that, Harvey Arquette and his lady friend went to the Heart O’ Chicago.

I gave them twenty minutes to get in the mood, then grabbed my Nikon.  Just being in the parking lot made my skin crawl, a light breeze carrying the aroma of urine and garbage, shadows flashing in and out of existence with the blinking neon heart on the sign.  Like I said, a classy place.

Harvey and his sweetheart left a small gap in their window curtains, so I had a pretty good view of the adultery bed. Much to my confusion and surprise, Harvey and the blonde were not getting to know each other in the carnal sense.  Instead, they were sitting together on the bed fully clothed and, between them on a little stand, was a dinosaur.

It wasn’t a living, breathing dinosaur, of course not.  It was a small skeleton, about the size of a large chicken, shaped like a shrunken down Tyrannosaurus Rex.  If I had to guess, I’d say it was a Compy (I read Jurassic Park back in the day, just like everyone else). 

I watched the two anti-lovebirds for about ten minutes.  They didn’t make out.  They didn’t fool around.  They didn’t even touch each other.  They just sat on the bed, looking at their dinosaur and smiling.  Occasionally one of them would reach out and gently touch its head or stoke its spine, as though they couldn’t believe it was there.

I went back to my car, turned on Tom Waits.  After about an hour, they left the Motel, I followed.  Harvey dropped the blonde off at home and then returned to his address . Before heading home myself,  I looked up a couple of things on my phone then drove back to Evanston to check something.

The next morning, I called Eleanor and told her to swing by my office when she had a chance.

“Good news,” I told her once she’d settled herself.  “Your husband isn’t cheating on you.  He just wants someone to play paleontologist with.”

I told her about the dinosaur.  And the motel.  And the blonde.  

“I went up to that ‘Dave’s Rock Shop’ place.  Do you know about it?  They sell rocks and minerals, some jewelry.  They have a mini-museum in the basement.”

“I’ve been there.”

“The lock on the door was jimmied.  That must have been how your husband and his platonic paramour got the dino.”

Storm clouds gathered behind Eleanor’s eyes.  “That bastard!” she said.  “He was supposed to steal that skeleton with me!”

I nodded like I understood, even though I didn’t.

She explained.  Eleanor and Harvey Arquette both loved dinosaurs.  They’d often playfully talked about robbing museums so they could have their own collection of fossils and skeletons.  She always dismissed it as just a fantasy and never took the conversations seriously.  Apparently, Harvey found a woman that would make his fantasy a reality.  I suppose it didn’t hurt that the blonde looked like Naomi Watts in that remake of King Kong.

Eleanor cried  – there’s almost always crying in bad marriage cases. – then she took out her cellphone.

“Hello, Evanston police?” I have some information about a robbery that happened last night.”

I guess any form of infidelity can take a bite out of wedded bliss.

John Weagly is a seven-time Derringer Award nominee (winning once in 2008). He’s also been nominated for the Spinetingler Award and the Pushcart Prize. As a playwright, over one hundred of his plays have received productions by theaters on four continents. A collection of his short speculative plays, TINY FLIGHTS OF FANTASY, has been taught at Columbia College.
You can find more of his short stories in the collections THE UNDERTOW OF SMALL TOWN DREAMS and DANCING IN THE KNEE-DEEP MIDNIGHT.