In the summer of 1941, Hollywood heats up again when Humphrey Bogart arrives right after a female corpse with a dead bird stuffed inside her overcoat topples into the office of B. Norman Investigations. While filming The Maltese Falcon, Bogie found a mysterious ancient Egyptian hawk artifact on his doorstep containing a mummified black bird. Someone with dark intentions threatens the main cast, one by one, leaving dead birds, from crows to falcons, as their calling cards.
While more murders pile up, jeopardizing the film from being finished, Bogie hires private eyes Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, infuriating his volatile third wife, Mayo Methot, or Sluggy, as she’s known in some circles. Unraveling the personal lives of Mary Astor, John Huston, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook, Jr., Peter Lorre, and Jack L. Warner in their quirky, humorous way, the PIs turn the underbelly of Tinseltown upside down to stop the crazed killer from claiming another victim.
“No author can seamlessly blend Hollywood history with and engaging mystery yarn better than Elizabeth Crowens. It’s a jaunty tale that could have been lifted from a Warner Bros. screenplay with all the principals from the studio’s famed stock company: The Maltese Falcon, Bogie, Mary Astor, Greenstreet, John Huston, and Jack L. Warner. Fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride through 1940s Hollywood!”
~ Alan K. Rode, film historian and author, Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film
“It’s like someone shook a movie projector and out tumbled Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and a duo from a struggling PI agency bringing all the lighthearted fun of a 1940’s Hollywood mystery. That someone is Elizabeth Crowens.”
~ Tom Straw, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
“A creative twist on The Maltese Falcon: Dead birds show up on doorsteps. Humphrey Bogart assumes the role of a real-life Sam Spade, and two young PIs rescue every oddball animal as they investigate. Even the mogul of a major movie studio is no match for a wisecracking myna bird who sounds like a Warner Brothers cartoon. If you’re a fan of Turner Classic Movies and the Golden Age of Hollywood, Bye Bye Blackbird will be sure to entertain.”
~ Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Tracy Crosswhite Mystery Series
“An office full of lost pets, a strange dame drops dead in the doorway, and Bogie appears with a knock-off Egyptian hawk … while shooting The Maltese Falcon. Thus begins the wild ride of Elizabeth Crowens’ Bye Bye Blackbird. Babs and Guy, the heroes of Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles, continue in this welcome, hilarious and worthy sequel that I can only describe as The Thin Man meets ‘hardboiled’ with both tongues firmly in cheek. Famous names, Hollywood haunts, and a crime I dare you to solve, make this well worth your time. As a lover of Old Hollywood, I loved this book!”
~ Jon Lindstrom, USA Today bestselling author of Hollywood Hustle, 4-time Emmy© nominee, award-winning filmmaker, and veteran actor known for True Detective, Bosch, and General Hospital.
Chapter 1
Look at the Birdie!
Hollywood 1941
On Friday, July 4th, only the most essential, dedicated, or insane Los Angelenos punched the clock. Established businesses that usually stayed open closed early that afternoon. For the fledgling ones, like the young private detectives at B. Norman Investigations, there would be no weenie roasts, barbeques, or national holiday celebrations. Death would soon follow. Every electric fan they owned hummed its own tune. Between the fan blades whirring and the cats purring, panting dogs, who could qualify as hotdogs, an injured pelican with its wing in a sling, and their janitor’s wisecracking myna bird, the whole kit and caboodle at Hollywood Boulevard and N. Sycamore resembled a cross between the Humane Society and the Griffith Park Zoo.
Guy Brandt, more detective-partner than secretary, manned the desk upfront. On top of it: a shoebox of magazine clippings, scissors, and a stack of The Times and Herald-Examiner. He undid one more button on his clammy, sweat-stained shirt, flung his tie onto their hat rack, and took a swig of his warm Nehi orange soda, already flat. He hoped to find new clients from newspaper leads but wasn’t getting anywhere. Babs Norman, who always had every pin curl in place, patted off her sticky forehead with a handkerchief. Way beyond a simple touch-up with powder and fresh lipstick, only a masterful makeup wizard, like Perc Westmore, could bring new life to this wilted flower.
“Wouldn’t it be fine and dandy if we could afford to run an ad at least once a week saying that we’re private detectives, specializing in discreet celebrity cases?” she asked.
An adventurous kitten, who strayed from the pack, latched on to Guy’s sock and started to climb his leg. “Maybe we should ask if we can put a note in the downstairs lobby that we’re also a pet adoption service.” He unhooked its claws, returning him to his mama.
“You think that would pay off our debts?”
“Do you always have to sound like a broken record?” An Irish Wolfhound, in need of a bath, sauntered in from the doorway between the two offices. He went up to Guy and plopped his oversized, hairy head into his lap. “Dog days not agreeing with you, Sir Henry?” After rubbing the furry beast’s head, he went to their icebox and plopped chunks of ice in the various water bowls scattered around both rooms. Several prostrated cats laid on their backs, trying to find coolness on the linoleum floor.
From under his pile of clippings, he fished out a copy of Black Mask. Babs, with a wooden clothespin clamping her nostrils shut and carrying an odiferous box of shredded newspapers, walked into his office and stopped short when she caught him reading the pulp. “You think we’re going to find our next client from detective fiction? We need another high-profile case like when we rescued Asta, so MGM could go into production on their next Thin Man film. They paid us an unheard-of amount of money…until you lost it all.”
“Stop being such a sourpuss.” He refused to give her eye contact.
“Do you think I’m enjoying spending time in our stifling office? I’d rather be at the beach with the man of my dreams.” Her inflection had a hint of sarcasm.
“Who’s the lucky fella?”
She went over to their monstrous dog and kissed him on the nose. “Looks like it’s you, Sir Henry of the Baskervilles. Instead of my frog prince, you’re my dog prince. Ah, you’re such a good boy.” She stared at the bulldog in the corner. “But we really need to paper-train Bruno.”
Their adopted bulldog whined. “You hurt his feelings,” Guy said. “Give him a good scratch behind his ears and apologize.”
She scowled. “I’ll give him two more weeks, and it’ll be your job to train him. Otherwise, he can go back to Wiggins, and I don’t care if one of his kids breaks out in hives.” She headed out the door to dump the litter.
* * *
“Our phone rang twice while you were out,” Guy said. “But Wiggins’ stupid bird answered before I could.”
“Hello, sucker!” the myna bird cackled. “Down for the count…1…2…3. Knocked him in the kisser, didn’t ya?”
“By the time I picked up the receiver, whoever it was hung up,” he explained.
“It’s hard to believe a bird can be so smart,” Babs muttered.
“Smart-mouthed is more like it,” he said. “Sounds like Jimmy Cagney, who he’s named after. Maybe we should let him earn his keep. The bird can impersonate him at parties.”
Babs stared at the troublemaker. “The person on the other end probably thought it was a prank.” She looked around the room. “Keep it up and…I got a lot of hungry cats and canines who wouldn’t mind a bowlful of myna bird stew.”
Wiggins, the building janitor, propped their front door open, causing their ginger tomcat to disappear into the hallway faster than gunfire. “My wife said the same. What are the two of ya doing here on Independence Day? With the tenants gone, I heard yer bickering all the way in the basement. Sounded like a married couple in divorce court. How did ya get in?”
“We had an extra set of keys,” Guy said.
Wiggins planted his hands on his hips. “More like makin’ a copy of my set while my back was turned. There’s no foolin’ me. Come on now. Who’ll be the first to confess?”
Both detectives buried their noses in their newspapers.
“All right, if none of ya willin’ to come clean, why aren’t you out having fun?”
“Paying our overdue office rent is my idea of fun,” Babs replied.
Wiggins looked confused. Guy explained, “We’re hurting. Nothing but small potatoes since retrieving our dognapped canine stars.”
“We might be forced to move out, if we don’t land a decent case,” said Babs. “I’m not looking forward to setting up shop at my house.”
Wiggins inhaled but choked. “You make sure you keep this place spic-and-span. If your neighbors start belly achin’…”
From inside his desk, Guy took out a sardine from its wax paper wrapping and tossed it to their pelican.
“Sniff…sniff… If you don’t get rid of this stench,” Wiggins continued, “my boss’ll make sure he throws you out on your arse.”
She plucked a bottle of cheap toilet water from her purse and spritzed the room. “Better now?”
Wiggins pointed toward the exit. “Goin’ after that mouser. Left the back door open to the alley downstairs. He’s liable to slip out and get lost forever.”
Babs handed her partner a feather duster. “Do something.” Then she returned to her lair with a stack of discarded tabloids to make fresh litter and to do her own skewed interpretation of housekeeping.
Guy reset their wall clock, which was a few hours behind the last time they had a power outage, and gave the reception area the minimal once-over by removing accumulated grime from the top of file cabinets. He was just about to straighten the frame displaying his private investigator’s license, when out of the side of his eye, he noticed a shadow. A large, irregular object leaned against the pebbled glass window of their front door. At first he paid it no mind and continued his cleanup crusade.
When minutes passed and it hadn’t budged, he called out just above a whisper, “Do you mind coming over? Make it quick, but be quiet.”
A startled canary flew out their open transom as Babs breezed toward the front. Guy pointed to the silhouetted figure. “I tidied up, like you asked, but don’t recall hearing anyone approach. This thing…it appeared out of nowhere and hasn’t moved since.”
Babs called out to see if it was Wiggins, but whomever it was didn’t respond. She inquired again. “The door is open. Come on in. We’re too hot and tired for practical jokes.”
With a nod, she gave Guy the go-ahead to open the door, but when he did, a young woman they’d never seen before, wearing a hat and an oversized coat despite the heatwave, fell face-forward onto the floor.
“The casting office is on the fourth floor,” Babs said, until she realized the lady hadn’t moved or said a word. Horrified, she squealed and froze in place.
Guy, also shaking, reached for the phone and called Wiggins’ downstairs office. His voice broke up. “Come up—pronto!”
As soon as he put down the receiver, she demanded he call the cops. Without thinking, she leapt up on a wooden chair as if she’d seen a mouse. Her legs wobbled, and she continued to holler.
Wiggins returned, heaving as if he had skipped waiting for the elevator and sprinted up the stairs. He had the missing tomcat draped over his shoulders. “Heard screams echoing down the hallway. You better keep better tabs on your tabbies. What the blarney did ya think was so important—Holy moly! Mary, Mother of God!”
Guy poked the stranger with his feather duster. Not having any luck, Wiggins, who was bigger than the two detectives combined, got a firm toehold with his work boots and rolled her onto her back. All three stared at the stiff.
“Oh, she’s dead alright,” Wiggins assured them. “Ever seen her before?”
Both PIs shook their heads. Guy tiptoed around the corpse and closed the front door. Wiggins fended off their curious menagerie.
“Something dark and…fea-ther-y is protruding from her coat. Like she was trying to conceal whatever she was carrying.” Babs wrinkled her nose. “Smells like she or someone else doused her with…men’s cologne. Not flowery enough to be one a lady would wear. Wiggins, how do you think she got in?”
“Through the back-alley door, I suppose, ’cause I locked the front. Could’ve snuck in and been here a while. Maybe passed out in a stairwell while my back was turned and crawled up to your floor before she expired.”
Guy paced the room and checked the clock. “The cops seem to be taking their time.” He pulled a flask from his file cabinet and took a swig. He offered some to Babs, but she declined.
Wiggins wrested the flask out of Guy’s hand and finished it to the last drop. “Sure as hell, this would have to happen on a holiday when the police are short-staffed.” He took a swatter from off the wall and clobbered a pesky fly that landed on the stranger’s ear. Babs trembled.
“She can feel it no more than if you were all doped up at the dentist,” Wiggins said.
Babs commented that the police could examine the body. She wasn’t touching it.
Guy suggested to Wiggins to wait for the cops downstairs. “They’ll need you to unlock the building.”
Keeping his distance, Guy asked, “Babs, how do you think she died?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” She made it clear she wasn’t even interested in slipping on gloves to search for an ID.
He suggested that this could be the lead they’ve been looking for. She didn’t see it that way. “This is no way to spend a holiday. Let the police and the medical examiner do their jobs. They’ve expressed they don’t want us meddling in their homicide cases, anyway. I just want her out of here.”
Soon, they heard footsteps and the sound of crunching paper. She took for granted the cops had arrived. “Come in. It’s unlocked.”
She and her partner didn’t make a move until the front door creaked open.
Instead of the police, Humphrey Bogart stood there holding a parcel haphazardly wrapped in brown paper and twine. “I called twice. Assumed you had an answering service to leave a message. Dialed the right number, but someone with a peculiar voice like a Warner Brothers cartoon picked up. When I tried to explain my predicament, he mocked me and cracked a few jokes. Figured I better stop over.”
“How did you get into our building?” Guy asked.
“Your janitor recognized me. When I asked to see you, he figured I was harmless. He said he was waiting for—” Babs interrupted his train of thought. Still standing on the chair, she covered her eyes with one hand and pointed to the floor without making a sound. Bogie backed up. The blood drained from his face. “Whoa! Guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he was expecting the cops.”
A black cat jumped on top of the victim and started making biscuits. “Oh, no, you don’t.” Guy bent down to throw him off.
“Wh-a-a-t happened?” Bogie’s words came out choppy.
Babs regained her voice, which, at first, came out in squeaks. “Not sure. What brings you here?”
“I’m looking for a private investigator. You came highly recommended as some of the best private dicks in town.”
Babs flushed. She preferred a more ladylike elucidation. With no further introductions needed, she ushered Bogart into her office, and Guy followed, grabbing a notepad off his desk. Even though she hated staring at the corpse, she kept her door open to keep an eye out for the police. She kept reminding herself to take deep breaths and not to panic.
“Do you mind clearing your desk?” Bogie held out his parcel. “I’d like to show you what I found on my doorstep this morning.”
With one fell swoop of her arm, the papers went into a spare box, which Babs said she’d sort through later. Bogart put his parcel down on her desk and fanned out his jacket.
“I guess we can skip formalities when the weather beats us into submission. Mind if I take this off?” His shirt was soaked. “This has been one of those days where I’ve felt like an omelet slapped on the Devil’s griddle.”
Babs identified his mysterious object as a museum replica of an ancient Egyptian canopic jar of Horus, the Hawk, the offspring of Isis and Osiris.
“This is much smaller and lighter than the falcon prop in our movie. Ours is about forty-seven pounds of lead. If you dropped it, you could break someone’s toe.” Bogie lifted its lid and revealed a mummified object. Taking special care, he unwrapped its gauze, stained but far from looking ancient, to reveal a sizable dead crow.
“I have no idea what this is supposed to symbolize, but now it looks like I’ve got competition from what’s in your front room as to which gives me the worst case of the heebie-jeebies,” Bogie remarked.
Guy pulled the privacy shades down on the pebbled glass windows on the walls and door separating the front office from her inner sanctum. “One would presume to find a dead falcon, not a raven, considering you’re in the middle of production for The Maltese Falcon.”
* * *
Excerpt from Bye Bye Blackbird by Elizabeth Crowens. Copyright 2025 by Elizabeth Crowens. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Crowens. All rights reserved.
Elizabeth Crowens is bi-coastal between Los Angeles and New York. For over thirty years, she has worn many hats in the entertainment industry, contributed stories to Black Belt, Black Gate, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazines, Hell’s Heart, and the Bram Stoker-nominated A New York State of Fright, and has a popular Caption Contest on Facebook.
Awards include: Leo B. Burstein Scholarship from the MWA-NY Chapter, New York Foundation of the Arts grant to publish the anthology New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst (no longer in print), Eric Hoffer Award, Glimmer Train Awards Honorable Mention, Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist, two Grand prize, six First prize, and multiple Finalist Chanticleer Awards. Crowens writes multi-genre alternate history and historical Hollywood mysteries.
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