The Deodorant Wars, Crime Noir Edition: The Devil Had Dry Armpits

(This entry is based on actual events.)

(I mean, kind of. I made up some parts up. See if you can guess which ones!) 

(Also, certain events have been recreated for photographic purposes.)

(I wore gloves. Ew.)

(Also also, if you have absolutely no idea what in sam blessed hill is going on here, allow me to direct you to the previous entries in the Deodorant Wars Saga [linked below], which goes further and further off the rails with each ridiculous installment.)

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four

The official cause of death? Accidental toilet drowning.  

"Some clumsy dumbass probably just knocked it off the bathroom counter and into the toilet with her elbow," the coroner said. "It's a real shame. By the looks of it she had a good 10, maybe even 20 clicks left in her."

I didn't think too much of it at first. Once you've been Dermatologist Tested and equipped with patented TRIsolid^TM body responsive technology, you pretty much become numb to this sort of thing. I just show up to write the reports, file the paperwork. 

The name's Lieutenant Degree Men Clinical Protection. I'm a cop. Maybe there was a time when I was a good one. Maybe there will come a time when I'll be one again. Right now, most days, it's just too damn hot out there to care. 

The sweat stains are gonna win anyway, so why even try? 

Her younger sister -- a sweet kid, smelled like cucumbers -- came to identify the body. And immediately started asking questions, poking around, sticking her lid where it had no business being. 

"This was no accident," she all but hollered. God, I hate when they make a scene. The last thing we need is for the shampoos to get wind of this. Them and the soaps are always getting mysteriously dropped in the shower and have been just itching to a reason to start a full-on riot over sink-side police coverups. 

"The angle, the trajectory," she went on, "It's all just too perfect. Who has that kind of aim with their elbow? Honestly. She was clearly pushed. On purpose."

"I loved my sister." Her voice was quieter now, thank goodness. "She was smart. Successful. Clinically proven."

"But she had...some enemies."

She may have looked like a dame's deodorant, but she had the crime and odor-fighting skills of a man. I had to admire that. 

She wasn't all aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex, though. Another look at her sister's lifeless body brought out her softer, moisturizing side.

"She always had prescription-strength wetness protection, but..."

She didn't need to say it. We were both thinking it. Sweat is one thing. Nothing can protect you from a full-on dunk in the shitbowl.

I needed to say something else, though, even if she didn't want to hear it. My own specially-formulated wetness protection didn't extend much further than the medicine cabinet, and if there was foul play going on here, the culprit probably didn't come from there.

No, I suspected this was the work of The Others. They'd once enjoyed a little taste of infamy and the good life -- something with the Internet, I didn't really understand any of it -- but have been banished to a bottom drawer for damn over two years now. They're well past their expiration dates but it turns out once you anthropomorphize a bunch of deodorants for blogging purposes, it gets awful difficult to just toss them in the trash. 

They were a motley bunch, for sure. Shifty. Made the whole drawer smell overpoweringly like lavender-scented cool fresh baby powder mixed with the ambiguously named-by-marketing committee smells of Bella Bloom, Sexy Intrigue and Just Dance. 

You never forget that smell.

Yeah, I had my work cut out for me here, if I wanted to help this poor dame find out what happened to her sister. You can probably imagine my surprise when I realized that...I did. Want to help, that is. There was just something about her. Something about this case. It stunk, all right, just like that damned bottom drawer.

"Don't worry, Dovecakes," I told her. "I'll ask around. Just know that getting to the real truth in this town is..."

"The pits."

(YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!)